Private bankers have been defined as owner-managers of their bank, irrespective of their type of activity, which could be in any field of banking, sometimes in conjunction with another one, especially commerce in the earlier periods.
Analysing the experiences of European private bankers from the early modern period to the early twenty-first century, this book starts by examining the slow emergence of specialist private bankers, largely from amongst those who provided commercial credit. This initial consideration culminates in a focus upon the roles that they played, both during the onset...