Banque des Pays du Nord
The Banque des Pays du Nord was a bank headquartered in Paris, France, originally established in 1911 on the initiative of leading Danish and Swedish financiers.
In 1943, it merged into the Union Européenne Industrielle et Financière, an investment bank established in Paris in 1920. The resulting entity was restructured in 1968, rebranded in 1970 as the Banque de l'Union Européenne, nationalized in 1982, acquired in 1983 by Paris-based Crédit Industriel et Commercial, and fully absorbed by the latter in 1990.
Banque des Pays du Nord
The BPN was founded on by Denmark's Landmandsbanken, Norway's, and Sweden's Stockholms Enskilda Bank, together with Hoskier Bank and Hambros Bank. It targeted a wealthy French clientele, for which it leveraged its prestigious head office at 28, avenue de l'Opéra and adjacent 4-6, rue Gaillon.The Schneider-Creusot financial group acquired control of the BPN in 1929, following the deterioration of its prior privileged links with the rival Banque de l'Union Parisienne. It initially kept it separate from the UEIF, its other investment banking affiliate.
Union Européenne Industrielle et Financière
The UEIF was originally established in 1920 by Eugène Schneider II in partnership with the Banque de l'Union Parisienne and the Empain group in relation with their business interests in the Little Entente countries, especially Czechoslovakia. Following the Munich Agreement of September 1938, however, the UEIF's strategy lost its purpose and the bank had to liquidate its investments in central Europe, thus acquiring the resources to buy out the BPN in 1943.UEIF became an investment bank in 1946 and in 1950 absorbed Énergie Électrique Rhône et Jura, a portfolio investment company. Despite the European reference in its name, most of UEIF's investments by that time were in France and French colonies. It started expanding into the rest of Europe in the 1960s.
Banque de l'Union Européenne
In 1967–1968, the Empain group, which had acquired Schneider in 1963, merged its own French banking affiliate the with UEIF to form the, which in 1970 was renamed the Banque de l'Union Européenne. The BUE was designed as a deposit bank, while a separate institution, Union Internationale de Financement et de Participation or Interunion, was established in February 1969 as a long-term credit bank. Through the restructuring, Marine Midland Bank, the Bank of Brussels, Basler Handelsbank, Bayerische Vereinsbank, Hambros Bank, and Mees & Hope became minority shareholders of the BUE, as did financial investment groups and Société Financière Internationale Desmarais pour l'Industrie et le Commerce. The BUE subsequently developed the provision of trade finance through its relationships with other entities of the Empain-Schneider group such as Creusot-Loire, Framatome, Ateliers et Chantiers de France, and Spie Batignolles.Vincent Bolloré started his business career as a junior employee of the BUE in the early 1970s.