Description:
The Société Générale de Belgique dominated the Belgian economy for more than 150 years. It invested for the long run in a portfolio of listed and private companies as the world’s first universal bank (pre-1935) and as holding company (post-1935). By introducing hand-collected data from balance sheet and investment portfolio, we find the company had ‘an edge’ when it was a universal bank, but declined in value after the split between its commercial and investment banking department, next to bad Colonial investments