BANKING: After the Centenary

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The international banking house of Speyer & Co. was 100 years old in 1937. Also, its arteries were beginning to harden. Polished little James Speyer, born in

Manhattan, apprenticed in family firms in Paris, London and Frankfurt, still had a thick German accent which he kept more nearly intact than his Manhattan banking house kept its European affiliations.

Since the World War, European connections had lost a lot of their value as the capital of the financial world moved to the U. S. There was a time when Speyer & Co. could raise $50,000,000 by cable overnight without calling on a single U. S. bank. That was long years after old Philip Speyer had sold millions of dollars worth of U. S. securities abroad to finance the Civil War, made a handsome profit for the house.

In the post-War twilight, Speyer & Co. floated many a foreign loan, financed railroads, built a railroad in Bolivia, power plants in Manila. But Speyer's London firm was dissolved in 1922; in 1934 the Lazard-Speyer-Ellissen banks in Berlin and Frankfurt were dissolved. Latterly Speyer & Co. has fallen into the sere and yellow leaf.

Last week Jimmy Speyer, 77, wealthy, still fond of ceremonious European dining, announced what Wall Street had long been expecting: his retirement and the dissolution of Speyer & Co.