Bethmann Bank
Bethmann Bank AG is a German private bank headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. It is a subsidiary of the Dutch ABN AMRO Bank N.V. and was the product of a merger between the historical German banks Delbrück, Bethmann and Maffei under the umbrella of the renowned Dutch ABN AMRO Bank. LGT Bank Deutschland joined this group in 2011. Bethmann Bank acquired the German private banking activities of Credit Suisse in December 2013. The acquisition positions Bethmann Bank, ABN AMRO’s private bank in Germany, as the third largest private bank in Germany. Bethmann Bank focuses on management, advisory  services and planning for major private assets. It also supports clients in succession planning for family-owned companies and in establishing charitable foundations. The bank's archive is today located in the Frankfurt City archive. Together with the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and F.A.Z. Media Solutions, Bethmann Bank organised a discussion series called Weltenwandler.tv, which addressed broad social issues. History. Delbrück & Co. Delbrück & Co. is described as the "financier to the Prussian state". The institution supported young entrepreneurs in the late 19th century, such as Siemens and Krupp. Adelbert Delbrück was one of the founders of Deutsche Bank. Clients  at Delbrück & Co and Bethmann were able to use corporate finance and asset management services long before these Anglicisms entered the German language. Bethmann Bank As a bank for "important projects and clients", Bethmann served Maria Theresa of Austria, Pope Pius VI, Tsar Alexander I and the Goethe family. The private bank helped to finance the construction of the Eiffel Tower and today remains one of the largest promoters of art in Frankfurt am Main. Maffei Bank The Maffei family, who hailed from Verona, established their own bank in Munich in 1802 and ran it for over 100 years. The  family was also a co-founder of the Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank (later HypoVereinsbank) and the insurance company Münchener Rückversicherung (later Allianz). A member of the family reopened the Maffei Bank after the Second World War. In the years that followed, it continued to move from being a specialist in securities and energy-sector lending to a pure private bank. ABN AMRO The forerunner of ABN AMRO was founded in the Netherlands by King William I in 1824 and began at an early stage to concentrate on world trade. The financing business led the bank to open branches on all  continents, laying the foundation for today's international network. Founding. The establishment of the Bethmann bank in Frankfurt am Main is dated to 1748, the year when Johann Philipp Bethmann (1715-1793), who had inherited the trading enterprise of his uncle "Jakob Adami" in 1746, officially took his brother Simon Moritz as a partner. From that point the enterprise was called Gebrüder Bethmann. Within a short span of time, the Bethmann bank developed into one of Frankfurt's leading (Christian-owned) banks, on a scale comparable only to its younger rival, the House of Rothschild. The bank's fortunes began  to rise in 1754 based on its business in imperial, princely and municipal bonds and skyrocketed from 1778, thanks to the bank's innovation of breaking the Austrian emperor's borrowing down into "sub-bonds" ("Partialobligationen") at 1000 gulden each offered to the public, which made them tradeable in secondary markets. This transformed the bank from a lender to an underwriter of bond issues. At one point, the profits of "Gebrüder Bethmann" exceeded those of all its Frankfurt competitors together, and it ranked first among all German banks.