Business & Finance: International Bankers

Chiefs of the national banks of England, France and Germany debarked at Manhattan last week for their regular summer conference and discussion of world economics with their good friend, Benjamin Strong, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. All had been in the U. S. before, but severally. All had met before, but in Europe, where heretofore Governor Strong has spent his summers visiting with them. These comrades in finance, these truly international bankers, were:

Charles Rist, Deputy Governor of the Banque de France (Emile Moreau is Governor), a close-mouthed man, who was of the four least known to U. S. newsgatherers. Few realized that he had been professor of law in the Faculté de Droit de Paris; that he was an intimate of Premier Raymond Poincare of France; that he was an intimate of onetime (1917 & 1925) French Premiers Paul Painlevé and (1924-25 & 1926) Edouard Herriot, with whom in 1921 he helped organize the now moribund Ligue de la Republique to fight Alexandra Millerand's Bloc National and establish a policy of democratic post-War reconstruction. M. Rist has been Deputy Governor of the Banque de France for only the past year. He is one of Europe's most profound economists.

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, President of the German Reichsbank, with a mind as clear-thinking as a calculating machine, is one of the constructive geniuses of post-War Germany. Born in 1877 he was a partner in the Darmstadter-und-National bank until 1923, worked with the Reich Currency Commission that set up the present gold mark standard in Germany, cooperated with the (Charles Gates) Dawes Committee on German reparations. He has been president of the Reichsbank since 1924. He is a stern man to deal with, imperturbable and ruthless in carrying out a fiscal program. Only seven weeks ago, when German speculators were running wild, he passed put instructions that loans to Berlin stock market operators be instantly reduced by onefourth. There was panic on the Berlin Bourse (TIME, May-23).

Montagu Collet Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, is most picturesque of the four. Reared in that fin-de-siècle British atmosphere that supplied Margot, Viscountess Oxford & Asquith with long, pendent earrings, Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde with a sunflower boutonnière and Winston S. Churchill with a paunch, Montagu Collet Norman affects a soft felt hat, bow necktie and a superbly pugnacious goatee. Like his contemporaneous compatriots his wit is keen, his thinking sharp, his knowledge authoritative. Born in 1871, he has been Governor of the Bank of England since 1920.