Jacques Laffitte
With the surge of industrialization, the importance of banking and finance in the Paris economy also grew. As Stendhal wrote at the time, the bankers were the new aristocracy of Paris. In 1837, Jacques Laffitte founded the first business bank in Paris, the Caisse Générale du Commerce et de l'Industrie. In 1842, Hippolyte Ganneron founded a rival commercial bank, the Comptoir Général du Commerce. The banks provided the funding for the most important economic event of the reign of Louis-Philippe: the arrival of the railroads. The brothers Émile and Issac Péreire, the grandchildren of an immigrant from Portugal, founded the first railway line to Paris.