Bank for International Settlements
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS, Bank für Internationalen Zahlungsausgleich, Banque des règlements internationaux, Banca dei regolamenti internazionali) is an international financial institution which is owned by member central banks. Its primary goal is to foster international monetary and financial cooperation while serving as a bank for central banks. The BIS carries out its work through its meetings, programmes and through the Basel Process, hosting international groups pursuing global financial stability and facilitating their interaction. It also provides banking services, but only to central banks and other international organizations. The BIS is based in Basel, Switzerland, with representative offices in Hong Kong and Mexico City. The BIS was created by Montagu Norman in the context of the Young Plan, on the initiative of a group of American bankers including Owen D. Young, J. P. Morgan Jr., Thomas W. Lamont, S. Parker Gilbert, and Jackson Reynolds, with further elaboration in the spring of 1929 by Owen Young with input from Shepard Morgan, Warren Randolph Burgess, Walter W. Stewart as well as Belgian official Émile Francqui and German central banker Hjalmar Schacht. Political positions within the Herbert Hoover administration made it impossible for U.S. Federal Reserve System officials to participate directly in the initiative, but the U.S. was still able to retain the roles of BIS chairman and president (held by private bankers in liaison with the Federal Reserve) during the bank's first half-decade of operation. The BIS's original role was thus to facilitate reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, and to act as the trustee for the German Government International Loan (Young Loan) that was floated in 1930. The need to establish a dedicated institution for this purpose was suggested in 1929 by the Young Committee, and was agreed to in August of that year at a conference at The Hague. The charter for the bank was drafted at the International Bankers Conference at Baden-Baden in November.
