One Bank to Rule Them All
Cosimo de’ Medici, patriarch of the famous medieval Florentine banking dynasty, believed that the key to success as a banker was to “avoid … political controversy, and always keep out of the public eye.” If Cosimo’s prescription rang true in the 15th century, before the advent of modern media with their ability to amplify every controversy and italicize every foible, it is truer still in the modern age. And no man better embodied Medici’s dictum in the first half of the 20th century than Montagu Norman.
Slight of build and utterly unassuming, Norman sported a Van Dyke beard that contrasted with his otherwise colorless demeanor and attire. Well-traveled for his day, Norman was inconspicuous during his frequent crossings of the Atlantic, all but ignored by journalists and the general public alike. Yet this unpretentious little man was arguably the most consequential human being of the century, at least in the political and financial realm. For Montagu Norman, a wily English patrician, was the world’s most important banker and financier, a man of carefully concealed titanic ambition and world-altering plans, who aimed to radically remake global finance.
War and Chaos
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