Banque de l'Indochine

The Banque de l'Indochine (bɑ̃k də lɛ̃dɔʃin), originally Banque de l'Indo-Chine ("Bank of Indochina"), was a bank created in 1875 in Paris to finance French colonial development in Asia. As a bank of issue in Indochina until 1952 (and in French Pacific territories until 1967), with many features of a central bank, it played a major role in the financial history of French Indochina, French India, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Djibouti, as well as French-backed ventures in Siam and China. After World War II, it lost its issuance privilege but reinvented itself as an investment bank in France, and developed new ventures in other countries such as Saudi Arabia and South Africa. The Compagnie Financière de Suez acquired a controlling interest in the Banque de l'Indochine in 1972, then merged it in 1975 with its own banking subsidiary to form Banque Indosuez, since 1996 itself part of the Crédit Agricole universal banking group. Following the early phases of the French conquest of Vietnam, the Comptoir d'escompte de Paris (CEP) in 1864 opened offices in French Cochinchina, and also developed a presence in Pondicherry, Calcutta, Bombay, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Yokohama. Meanwhile, the rival Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC) had become the Paris correspondent of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and had powerful political backers in the conservative Catholic administration under France's President Patrice de MacMahon. In the early 1870s, both banks developed competing projects to create an institution that would receive the privilege of issuing money in French Indochina. In October 1874, the CEP, together with its allies, the Hentsch-Lütscher, Hoskier, and Paccard & Mirabaud merchant banks and the newly created Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (BPPB), reached an agreement with the CIC to create the Banque de l'Indochine as a joint venture. On the face of it, CEP and CIC, with their respective allies (including for the CIC the Société Marseillaise de Crédit and the Banque franco-égyptienne), controlled equal blocks of shares in the new institution, but CEP was the dominant partner.