The Bank That Sacked Its Customers

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

When we think of investment banking we think of high-risk trades, profit at any cost and big bonuses but there is an institution that sees it differently; Brown Brothers Harriman. Brown Brothers was founded in 1818 and is one of the oldest banks in the US. It has maintained its cautious ethos ever since and in a world of unforeseen but actually quite foreseen catastrophes it begs the question as to what do you want your banks and companies to be like. chasing 100x profits or slow and steady? Zachary Karabell joins Dan for the story of the bank that sacked its customers, in the 80s, which bears the institutional memory of ships cargoes lost, financial collapses, pandemics and busts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. In a world of unforeseen but actually quite
0:07.9	foreseen catastrophes, how do we want our banks and our companies to act? Should they
0:12.7	be doing what we've assumed they should be doing probably since the Great Bang of the 1980s,
0:15.9	which is chase around being unbelievably agile, bringing in 100X profits, destroying industries
0:23.5	with daring new technological solutions? Should they be slow and steady? Well, this
0:29.8	is a story of a very different kind of bank. It's a history of one of the oldest banks in America,
0:35.6	a bank with its fingerprints all over US and world history. It's a story of a bank that actually
0:41.7	ends up having too many customers, so it's sacked its customers rather than expand too fast.
0:46.8	It's a bank that treasures its institutional memory, a history of ships sinking in the Atlantic
0:52.4	and losing cargoes of previous financial collapses of pandemics, of booms and busts. This is a story
0:59.6	of Brown Brothers Haramon, a bank that probably like E.I. has actually never heard of. The writer,
1:04.8	Zachary Carrebel brought to my attention, you may remember Zachary, he came on the pod to talk about
1:08.6	Sue's Canal the other day when it was blocked. The subject was one of his previous books,
1:12.8	and he said his next book was on this rather remarkable institution. So I go back on the pod to
1:17.6	talk about this very unusual American financial institution. If you want to learn more about
1:22.4	19th century history when this bank was founded, as you can do so, history hit.tv. We've got
1:27.0	hundreds of podcasts there, you can listen to them without the ads. We've also got documentaries
1:31.3	by the barrel full. We've got ships, cargoes, heaving with documentaries. From all periods,
1:38.5	from the Stone Age right to the present day, just head over to history hit.tv and sign up to a
1:44.9	revolution in history broadcasting. It's a kind of safe, steady investment, but I think Brown
1:50.7	Brothers Harrowman would approve of. But in the meantime, if you enjoy this interview with Zachary Carrebel.
2:01.6	Hey buddy, thanks for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me back.
	...

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