ALLIANCE OF HISTORIC BANKS

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2242, 31 August 1914, Page 3

ALLIANCE OF HISTORIC BANKS

THE ROMANCE OF COUTTS'S. An amalgamation of two historic private banking firms was recently announced in the following official statement:—An amalgamation has been arranged between Messrs. Coutts and Co. and Messrs. Roberts, Lubbock, and Co., subject to confirmation by the stockholders of Messrs. Coutts and Co. The business-will , be carried on under the name of Coutts and Co., and the management will bo continued in the same hands and in the same manner as hitherto.

These axe both old-established private banks of the highest standing, indeed Coutts and Co. may bo aptly describod as the Aristocrat of Banks. The capital of Coutts and Co. is £600,000, it has a reservo fund of £400,000, and holds deposit and current accounts amounting to about eight and a half million sterling. The capital , ani reserve of Roberts, Lubbock and .Co., amount to half a million, sterling, and it holds deposits and current accounts amounting to about three and three-quarter millions. The business of Robarts, Lubbock and Co. ires established in 1772, but the firm assumed its present style in. 1860, when the firm of Robarts, Curtis and Co.— which contained a Lubbock —was amalgamated with the firm of Lubbock, Foster and Co.

It is in. the history of Coutts and Co.! however, that most romance is to be found, mainly because of the remarkable personality of Thomas Coutts, who died m 1822 aiter VuMing up the bank with the aristocratic connections for which, it has always been famous. Tho firm itself was founded iu 1692 as a private bank in-Scotland, and it was not tiil some years later that Coutts's became known loere as the London brancn of an Edinburgh, bank. It was opened in. the Strand as Campbell and Coutts, and then became Coutts and Coutts.

The famous Thomas Coutts when he had become a wealthy London banker and a weighty financial adviser even to the nation itself, married *■ maidservant;, but, of his- three daughters one married Sir Francis Burdett, the great "reform M.P." ■ for Westminster, another became Countes3 of Guildford, and a third Marchioness of Bute. Because Coutts's Bank advanced to Sir Thomas Burdett £100,000 partly for election expenses George 111 -withdrew his account with the bank, put his .money into a Windsor bank—and lost it. At the ago of eighty the redoubtable Thomas Coutts married a second time, Harriot-Melon, the actress, and to her he left tho whole of his fortune of £900,000. She became Duchess of St. Albans, and returned all the money to the Coutts family—to tho lady who became Bareness BurdettCoutts'of philanthropic memory ._ Ten years ago Coutts's left their qunmt old original buildings in the Strand for new premises, which almost face the old rite.\.. '. ;