Banque de Salonique

The bank's former headquarters in Thessaloniki, now Stoa Malakopi

The Banque de Salonique (Bank of Thessaloniki, Greek: Τράπεζα Θεσσαλονίκης, Turkish: Selanik Bankası) was a regional bank headquartered in Thessaloniki and Istanbul. Created in 1888 under the initial leadership of the Salonica Jewish Allatini family, it contributed to the development of the Eastern Mediterranean and Southern Balkans during the late Ottoman Empire. In the Interwar period its activity was mainly focused on Northern Greece, where it operated until the German occupation, and Turkey, where it kept operating until 2001, albeit under different names after 1969. Its preserved headquarters buildings are landmarks, respectively, of Valaoritou Street, a significant thoroughfare of downtown Thessaloniki, and of Bankalar Caddesi in the Karaköy neighborhood of Istanbul.

Name[]

The defunct bank's name is now generally referred to in French, because of its historical context. In the late 19th century, the use of French was prominent among the many languages of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the business community and even more so in Thessaloniki.^[1] The bank's internal language for its corporate operations was French from its founding in 1888. Furthermore, the bank was controlled by French interests from 1907 until 1969.^[2] In Turkey, the bank increasingly operated under its Turkish name Selanik Bankası especially after its legal restructuring in 1934 to comply with the new Turkish banking law.^[2]: 247 Even then, however, its securities were labeled bilingually in Turkish and French.^[3]

History[]

The bank was established in Thessaloniki (then known as Salonica) in 1888, as a joint investment of the banking office of the Allatini family group (Fratelli Allatini), the Comptoir d'escompte de Paris, the Austrian  [de] of Vienna, and the Bank of Hungarian Lands (Ungarische Landesbank AG) of Budapest.^[4]: 23 The Comptoir d'escompte soon collapsed and in 1889 its stake was acquired by the Imperial Ottoman Bank.^[5]: 572

The Banque de Salonique soon opened branches in Istanbul, Monastir (now Bitola) in 1893, Smyrna (now İzmir) in 1898,^[6] Kavala in 1904, Üsküb (now Skopje) in 1907, as well as offices in Dedeagach (now Alexandroupoli), Xanthi and Drama in 1909 and Souffi, Kumanovo and Gyumyurdjina (now Komotini) in 1910.^{[5]: 575  [7]} It also opened Egyptian branches in Alexandria and Cairo in 1905, but that business was unsuccessful and liquidated in 1907–1908 with the branches acquired by Banco di Roma.^[5]: 576 Undeterred, it kept expanding in the region with a branch in Beirut in 1909 and another in Tripoli in 1911.^[5]: 577 By 1913 it also had locations in Adrianople (now Edirne) and Kirk-Kilisse (now Kırklareli).^[8]: 73

The Banque de Salonique was listed on the Paris Bourse in 1904, and incurred four capital increases between 1905 and 1908.^[5]: 574 France's Société Générale participated in one of these transactions in 1907 and consequently acquired a controlling ownership stake for itself and its French clients in the Banque de Salonique, whose new shareholders also included Paribas and the  [de] of Vienna.^[5]: 579 Given its expansion in multiple parts of the Ottoman Empire, the Banque de Salonique moved its headquarters from Thessaloniki to Istanbul in 1910.^[5]: 577 Société Générale quickly became its main financial supporter, not least during the turmoil of the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913, and also granted credit to the Allatini family businesses.^[5]: 581 In the early 1910s, Société Générale had to manage an unstable competitive balance between the Banque de Salonique and its larger competitor (and also minority shareholder) the Imperial Ottoman Bank.^{[5]: 582-583} In the context of rising tension between France and Austria-Hungary, the Austrian Länderbank in 1913 sold its interest in Banque de Salonique to the  [fr], another affiliate of Société Générale headquartered in Saint Petersburg.^[5]: 584

In 1918, in view of the new geopolitical situation cemented by World War I and the Russian Revolution, the bank closed its operations in Monastir, Üsküb, Xanthi, Dedeagach, Gyumyurdjina, Tripoli, Kirk-Kilisse, and Drama. More fundamentally, Société Générale could no longer use it as a vehicle for business in Istanbul and the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, let alone as a springboard for business in Russia as it had hoped for in the early 1910s.^[2] Société Générale consequently sold its controlling interest in October 1919 to the  [fr] (CFAT), also headquartered in Paris.^[5]: 587 Simultaneously, the bank's management was renewed, even though members of the Allatini/Misrachi family remained on the bank's board throughout the 1920s. By 1925, the CFAT owned more than half of the Banque de Salonique's equity capital.^[2]: 245

Following the Treaty of Lausanne and the normalization of Greek-Turkish relations in 1923, the Banque de Salonique was able to resume its business development in Turkey, even though it closed its Edirne office in 1924. In the interwar period it opened new branches in Adana and Mersin, in addition to its Istanbul seat of Galata (transformed into a newly capitalized bank in 1934) and branches near Sultan Hammam across the Golden Horn and in Smyrna (eventually closed in 1937).^{[2]: 247, 249} It also expanded in Greece from its Northern base, and in 1925 opened an office in Athens, then another one in Piraeus in 1931, in addition to the prewar branch it had kept in Kavala.^{[2]: 248-248}

During World War II, most of the bank's staff in Thessaloniki fell victims of the destruction of the Jewish community by the German occupation forces, which also commandeered the bank's building and burnt its archive. Following the liberation of Greece in 1944, the CFAT opted not to revive its Greek activity and sold the Thessaloniki seat and branches to the Bank of Chios in 1947.^[2]: 265

In Turkey, the bank's operations were comparatively unaffected during the second world war, thanks to the country's neutrality. The Banque de Salonique opened a new Istanbul branch in Osmanbey in 1958. (The Sultan Hammam branch, meanwhile, was relocated to Eminönü in 1955.)^[2]: 265 In the 1960s, however, the CFAT lost its core Algerian and Tunisian operations (it renamed itself Société Centrale de Banque in 1963) and its Levantine footprint became increasingly difficult to maintain. It closed the Mersin branch in 1967, and in 1969 sold its controlling stake in Banque de Salonique to Yapı Kredi, which renamed it International Bank for Industry and Commerce (Turkish: Uluslararası Endüstri ve Ticaret Bankası).^[2]: 268 Yapı Kredi was then purchased by Çukurova Holding in 1975, and with it, the majority of the shares in Uluslararası.^[9] It changed name again to become İnterbank in 1990. In 1996 Çukurova sold its majority stake to Cavit Çağlar's Nergis Holdings. Eventually İnterbank was taken over by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey in January 1999, and liquidated during the 2001 Turkish economic crisis.^[10]

Buildings[]

Thessaloniki[]

The headquarters building of the Banque de Salonique in downtown Thessaloniki was designed in 1905 by Vitaliano Poselli,^[11] and completed in 1909,^[12] on ground that was previously the large garden of the Allatini family mansion.^[4] It was one of few buildings of the neighborhood that survived the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917. After World War II and the Banque de Salonique's demise, it hosted the Bank of Chios from 1950 to 1954,^[12] when the Voreopoulou family purchased it and renamed it "Malakopi Arcade" (Greek: Στοά Μαλακοπή) in memory of their ancestral town, now Derinkuyu in central Turkey. Its clock was stopped by the 1978 Thessaloniki earthquake and, in memory of that events, stands still at 11:05.^[11] The building was listed as a protected landmark in 1983.^[12] As of 2021, one of the arcade's shops is named Pizzeria Poselli in a tribute to the building's architect.^[13]

Istanbul[]

Bankalar Caddesi in Istanbul with the bank's former headquarters at far right

From 1913 onwards, the Banque de Salonique's seat in Istanbul was located in the  [tr] building built in 1909 by Assicurazioni Generali on a design by architect  [tr].^[14] That building lies immediately to the east of the Imperial Ottoman Bank's headquarters in downhill Galata, now the Karaköy neighborhood.^[15] The bank only rented part of the building from Generali, including the street level on Bankalar Caddesi.^[16] It was kept by the bank until the 1990s, when it became Generali's Turkish headquarters. Generali in turn sold it in 2011 to businessman İsmet Koçak for redevelopment as a hotel.^[17][18]

Izmir[]

The bank's branch building, on the city's central Fevzipaşa Boulevard, was rebuilt in ornate Art Deco style following the burning of Smyrna. That building is no longer extant.^[19]

See also[]

• Allatini (company)
• Marcel Dassault, whose mother was born in the Allatini family^[4]

Notes[]