The article reports the results of primary research aimed at eliciting new information on the nature of the relationship between english banks and the business sector over the long period, 1920–68. Bank archives have been used to conduct a microeconomic study of lending by english commercial banks to business clients. Three sets of results are reported. First, on the basis of a sample of over four thousand individual business loans, new data are presented on the nature and duration of business loans, the purposes for which they were used, the banks' requirements regarding collateral and interest rates charged. Secondly, the parameters governing bank practice are examined through the presentation of the reasons for which one of the leading clearing banks, the midland, turned down requests for business loans from a subset of firms. Thirdly, a detailed comparison is made of the loans granted to small private firms and to larger public companies; and regression analysis is used to assess the banks' treatment of the two groups. The data are presented within the theoretical framework of english ‘transaction banking’ which, it is argued, offers a strong rationale for the reported continuity in bank practice over the long term.

This article explores the structure of the italian capitalist system by focusing on the relationships between financial firms – banks, insurance and holding companies – and industrial companies in italy during the period 1952–72 through the analysis of the interlocks that existed between them. By an interlock is meant the link created between two firms when an individual belongs to the board of directors of both. The analysis is based on a database – imita.db – containing data on over 30,000 directors of italian joint-stock companies for the years 1952, 1960 and 1972. After a descriptive statistical overview of the companies and the directors included in the database, the article develops a network connectivity analysis of the system. This is integrated with a prosopographic study of the big linkers, defined as those directors cumulating the highest number of offices in each benchmark year. The article confirms that italian capitalism maintained substantial peculiarities in the period investigated. in particular, it argues that interlocks played an important role in guaranteeing the stability of the positions of control of the major private companies and their connections with state-owned enterprises. In 1952 and 1960 the system, centred on the larger electrical companies, showed the highest degree of cohesion. That centre dissolved after nationalisation of the electricity industry in 1962 and was replaced by a less strong and cohesive one, hinged on banks, insurance and the major finance companies.

This article assesses the role of international markets in the brazilian financial crisis of 1890/91 (the crash of the encilhamento). It looks for the impact of the argentine financial crisis in 1890 (the baring crisis) on brazilian access to capital markets. The history of bond yield fluctuations in london for brazilian and argentine debt, exchange rates, data on investment flows and archival and journalistic accounts reveal a close congruence between the argentine and brazilian crises. The effects of the argentine experience carried over to brazil because the open capital and money markets of the period easily transmitted crisis from one economy to another and because fundamental conditions in both economies rendered them similarly vulnerable to fluctuations in capital flows. The article raises this case as a precedent for the contagious financial crises that emerging markets faced at the end of the twentieth century.

In 1693 Thomas Neale, groom porter to their majesties, organised a lottery that offered to its lucky winner a prize of £3,000. The scheme proved a great success, encouraging a variety of entrepreneurs to float similar projects. Indeed, by 1698 lotteries that offered tickets costing as little as one penny allowed all but the most destitute to indulge in dreams of wealth. Although these schemes may be seen as a mere manifestation of the contemporary love of gambling and games of chance, this article argues that they can also reveal much about the nature and progress of the financial revolution.