Banque de l'Indochine

Did You Know?

• The Banque de l'Indochine issued paper currency in the concessions where it had branch offices in China.
• The bank's first banknotes were printed in Paris by the Bank of France.

History

The Comptoir d'escompte de Paris set up branches in French Cochinchina in 1864 and also expanded into Pondicherry, Calcutta, Bombay, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Yokohama. Its rival, the Crédit Industriel et Commercial, served as the Paris correspondent for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and enjoyed strong support from the conservative Catholic government of President Patrice de MacMahon. During the early 1870s, both banks pursued separate plans to establish a bank with the right to issue currency in French Indochina. In October 1874, the Comptoir d'escompte de Paris, along with the merchant banks Hentsch-Lütscher, Hoskier, and Paccard & Mirabaud, plus the newly formed Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, struck a deal with the Crédit Industriel et Commercial to create the Banque de l'Indochine as a joint venture. Although the two sides and their allies each held equal blocks of shares on paper, the Comptoir d'escompte de Paris was the leading force.

Sites

The Banque de l'Indochine originally operated at 34, rue Laffitte in a building later demolished. In July 1902, it moved to a new headquarters at 15 bis, rue Laffitte, designed by Henri Paul Nénot, whose exterior still survives. In March 1922, the bank moved to a larger building at 96 boulevard Haussmann, designed by René Patouillard-Demoriane, which remained the seat of Banque Indosuez until the late 1990s and was later rebuilt behind its preserved façade. The bank's seat in Saigon, its original main hub in Asia, was located on Quai de Belgique on the banks of the Bến Nghé Channel. Its latest reconstruction on the same site, using granite from Biên Hòa, was completed in late 1930 and inaugurated in 1931. Designed by Félix Dumail in ostentatious neoclassical style with some exterior details inspired by Cham and Khmer architecture and a large art deco atrium, the building was sold in 1955 to the National Bank of Vietnam, taken over by the State Bank of Vietnam in July 1976, and added to the list of protected national relics in 2016. From 1955 to 1975, the Banque française de l'Asie, the bank's South-Vietnamese subsidiary, had its Saigon seat in the former building of the Diethelm group, also on the Quai de Belgique.

Leadership

The bank's two key leadership positions were chairman and chief executive or general manager, the latter often also a board member with the title of administrateur délégué. Édouard Hentsch served as chairman from January 1875 to March 1889, followed by Charles Sautter, Ernest Denormandie, Jean Hély d'Oissel, Albert Guillemin de Monplanet, Stanislas Simon, an interim period, René Jules Thion de la Chaume, Marcel Borduge, Paul Baudoin, Emile Minost, François de Flers, and Jean Maxime-Robert until 1975. Pierre Girod served as general manager from January 1875 to March 1889, also as board member and administrateur délégué. Subsequent general managers included Stanislas Simon, René Jules Thion de la Chaume, Paul Baudoin, an unnamed holder from March 1940 to September 1952, François de Flers, and Jean Maxime-Robert.