Compagnie Algérienne

The Compagnie Algérienne, from 1942 to 1948 Compagnie Algérienne de Crédit et de Banque (, "Algerian Credit and Banking Company"), was a significant French bank with operations in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon as well as mainland France. It was formed in 1877 in a restructuring of its predecessor entity, the Société Générale Algérienne ("General Algerian Company"), itself founded in 1865-68. The Compagnie Algérienne eventually merged in 1960 with the Banque de l'Union Parisienne.[1] Following a series of subsequent restructurings, its main successor entities as of 2022 are the Crédit du Nord in France, the Crédit populaire d'Algérie in Algeria, the Banque de Tunisie in Tunisia, Attijariwafa Bank in Morocco, and the Banque Libano-Française in Lebanon.

Société Générale Algérienne

The Société Générale Algérienne (SGA) was created in Paris on 1865/05/18, at a time of ambitious outward-oriented French business initiatives such as the Suez Company (est. 1858) or Imperial Ottoman Bank (est. 1863 with British partners). The SGA's founders included prominent French and international financiers such as Edward Charles Blount, Louis Frémy, Édouard Hentsch, and Paulin Talabot, as well as landowning French colonists in Algeria. Louis Frémy, the governor of Crédit Foncier de France, became its founding chairman on 1868/11/10. The company’s head office was established at 11-13, rue des Capucines in Paris, adjacent to the Crédit Foncier's own headquarters complex.

The SGA subsequently acquired vast landholdings and lent to finance mining, infrastructure and land development projects in Algeria, funded mainly by bond issuance. It opened banking offices in Algiers, Bône, Constantine, Oran as well as Marseille in 1869, and also provided short-term credit to Spain and Egypt. This dynamic expansion resulted in financial overstretch during the downturn of the mid-1870s, which also severely impacted Crédit Foncier, the SGA's main sponsor together with Société Générale.

Compagnie Algérienne

The Compagnie Algérienne was formed in Paris on 1877/11/30 to acquire assets of the SGA which its shareholders had decided to liquidate; as part of the restructuring, the former SGA's shareholders received shares of the new company for 40 percent of their SGA shares' nominal value, and nearly all its creditors were eventually reimbursed. The Compagnie endeavored to develop its vast holdings in Algeria for agricultural production, and became a major provider of rural and urban mortgages. It expanded the SGA's previous commercial banking operations and opened new branches between 1878 and 1906 in Blida, Bougie, Mascara, Médéa, Sétif, Sidi Bel Abbès, and Souk Ahras..

By 1920, its Algerian branch network extended to Affreville (now Khemis Miliana), Aïn Beïda, Aïn Témouchent, Algiers, Aumale (now Sour El-Ghozlane), Batna, Blida, Boghari, Bône (now Annaba), Bordj Bou Arréridj, Bordj Bouira, Bordj Menaïel, Boufarik, Bougie, Colea, Constantine, Djidjelli, Guelma, Jemmapes (now Azzaba), Khenchela, Maison-Carrée (now El Harrach), Marengo (now Hadjout), Mascara, Médéa, Mostaganem, Orléansville (now Chlef), Palikao (now Tighennif

Aftermath

In 1960, the Banque de l'Union Parisienne (BUP), which had pre-existing financial links with both the Banque Mirabaud and its partner the Compagnie Algérienne, purchased the latter outright and merged it with its own parent entity. The banking subsidiary CACB was kept as a separate operation, and renamed Compagnie Française de Crédit et de Banque (CFCB) as of 1965/01/01 following Algerian independence. In 1964, the Moroccan operations were subsidiarized as the Compagnie Marocaine de Crédit et de Banque (CMCB), headquartered in Casablanca in line with the newly independent Moroccan government's policy of marocanisation of its banking sector. A new subsidiary, the "CFCB-Société Nouvelle", was created in 1965 and on 1966/01/01 took over the CFCB's banking network in mainland France.

Following the 1966 acquisition of the BUP by the Suez Company, the CFCB-Société Nouvelle merged on 1967/01/01 with other banking operations of the BUP and was renamed Banque de l'Union Parisienne-CFCB, majority-owned by the Compagnie de Suez.[7] In 1971, that entity was renamed simply Banque de l'Union Parisienne, and Suez sold its 80% equity stake to the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, which in turn merged it with the Crédit du Nord in 1973. As a consequence, the former mainland French branches of the Compagnie Algérienne became branches of the respective regional banks of the Crédit du Nord group (itself acquired in 1997 by Société Générale), e.g. the Société Marseillaise de Crédit

Leadership

• Louis Frémy, Chairman of the Société Générale Algérienne 1868-1877
• Jules Tarbé des Sablons, Chairman 1878-1893
• Lucien Bordet, Chairman 1893-1923
• Jean Boissonnas, Chairman 1923-1942
• Jean Pallier, Chairman 1942-1960
• Antonin Bernard, Chairman 1965-1972

See also

• Banque de l'Algérie
• Compagnie Marocaine
• List of banks in France