The story
The merchant Levy Behrens, who had immigrated from Pyrmont, founded the company L. Behrens & Söhne with his sons in Hamburg in 1806. Successful merchant bankers, they traded primarily in English and Saxon textiles and drapery, which they sold in northern Germany. The two sons founded subsidiaries in English: Salomon Levy Behrens in 1815 in Manchester the S. L. Behrens & Co. and Jakob Behrens in 1834 in Leeds the still existing Jacob Behrens & Co..
They began working with the London banking house Rothschild, L. Behrens & Söhne, the Frankfurt banking house Rothschild and the Berlin banking house S. Bleichröder. L. Behrens & Söhne rose to become one of the leading Hamburg banking houses, alongside Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co, Conrad Hinrich Donner and M. M. Warburg & Co.
After the First World War, L. Behrens & Söhne entered the sugar trade and was one of the first German companies to export German sugar.
From Wikipedia’s article on L. Behrens & Söhne, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3