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British Multinational Banking, 1830-1990. By Geoffrey Jones * New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1993. xiii + 511 pp. Charts, tables, appendixes, notes, selected bibliography, and index. $69.00. ISBN 0-19-820273-3.
By the term British multinational banking, Geoffrey Jones is referring primarily to those London-based banks formed in the nineteenth century that operated almost completely outside Britain. In addition, he covers the twentieth-century expansion overseas of the domestic British banks, especially their disastrous acquisitions in the United States. There is a book to be written tracing the rise, fall, and reorientation of those banks, started in Britain or by the British abroad, to provide banking facilities for developing economies. There is also a book to be written charting the expansion overseas of the British domestic banks as they sought to be major players in a global financial system. But this attempt to cover all British banking outside Britain detracts from the book by blurring its focus to a great extent; the two components do not fit well together.
The book opens with an introduction that seeks to apply current theories in business organization and success to explain the nature...