Banque Worms

Early years

Hypolite Worms joined Worms & Cie, which had been founded by his grandfather, in 1910. He became a managing partner and effective head of the organization on 1 January 1916. In 1928 Worms & Cie had three branches: coal trading, shipping, and ship building. Hypolite Worms decided to found a fourth branch for banking, the services bancaires (banking services), modelled on English merchant banks. Raymond Poincaré had stabilized the franc on 25 June 1928, and the banking industry was entering what promised to be a prosperous period.

At first the banking services department mainly handled signature transactions, or bank acceptances, in the spirit of a merchant bank. The other departments of Worms & Cie became customers, as did companies associated with the partners. Signature transactions led to discounting commercial paper. This led to deposits, which enabled new types of financial transactions and equity investments. Banking services was involved in various financing operations during the difficult period of the Great Depression. Ferdinand Vial joined the organization as chief of banking services on 4 July 1928. Lucien Guérin joined in July 1934. He had previously held the same position with the Banque de Suède et de Paris, and had connections in the Nordic and Scandinavian countries. Banking services began to establish privileged relationships with northern Europe. Gabriel Le Roy Ladurie was appointed head of the department in June 1936. By 1939 banking services had solid arrangements with banks in London and New York.

Nationalization and later history

Banque Worms was nationalized in early 1982 by the French government. At the time Worms & Cie controlled the bank, and owned slightly less than 50%. From 1982 to 1984 Georges Vianès was chief executive officer of Banque Worms. The tax inspector Jean-Michel Bloch-Lainé was president of Banque Worms from 1984 to 1992, and engaged the bank in financing real estate.

In April 1989, Banque Worms mistakenly received about $2,000,000 from a debtor but refused to consent to a return of the fund. The case was litigated up to the Court of Appeals of New York and was closed in 1991 in Banque Worms v. BankAmerica International

The Union des Assurances de Paris (UAP) was privatized in 1994. The UAP acquired the bank as part of the privatization, which proved to be a disaster due to the catastrophic real estate investments. In 1997 the AXA insurance group acquired UAP and the bank. In 1999 the bank had 1,170 employees with 16 branches in France, including three in Paris. It served medium-sized and large companies, institutions, and wealthy private clients, who accounted for 20% of the business. Services included business cycle financing, asset management and financial advice.

In October 2000, it was reported that Deutsche Bank was in talks with AXA to acquire the bank. Deutsche Bank would get a network of 17 branches with 15,000 private customers and 2,000 business customers. Assets under management amounted to €7.5 billion. The US-based subsidiary Banque Worms Capital Corp. was acquired by Deutsche Bank on 24 October 2000. In February 2001 the AXA Group confirmed that it had sold its wholly owned subsidiary Banque Worms to Deutsche Bank. The sale was due to be completed before 15 April 2001. The acquisition was completed on 2 April 2001. In 2003 the bank lost €35.47 million. The 13 branches of the bank were sold to HSBC's subsidiary Crédit Commercial de France. In April 2004, it was reported that Banque Worms, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, would become Licorne Extinction Gestion Initiative Réalisation with the purpose of managing, transferring and liquidating all its assets.