Banking in Savoy and embeddedness within local business communities (1860-)

The annexation of Savoy by France fuels the issue of the fate of Banque de Savoie, because Banque de France was reluctant to share its monopoly as bank of issue, which explains the absorption of its rival in 1865. A second issue was the creation of local banking tools, embedded in regional business communities, as leverage to industrial clusters at the heart of the alpine productive system. Two big family banks and four mutual institutions reflected this Savoyard will to resist the grip of banks from Paris, Lyon, and Geneva. A third issue became the “type” of business model of Savoy banks, between a classical discount model, a type of enterprise banking committed to industrial finance in favour of customer companies, and, last, “regional banking”, quite mixed banking. Each period of the Savoy economic growth privileged this variety of models, before a convergence towards a more balance model of commercial banking took shape after WWII.