|
Martins Bank’s Paris Office features four times in
Martins Bank Magazine: In 1947 the
Bank’s Paris representative, Mr H de Boehtlingk retires. In 1950 Miss Betty Jackson from the Bank’s
Editorial and Advertising Department writes about the day she visited the
Paris Office, and met the staff.
Finally in 1962 we read about the retirement of Mr H de Boehtlingk’s
successor Monsieur Hammerli, and about his replacement, Monsieur Francois
Garelli.
  It has been the policy of our bank not
to maintain branches abroad, but for many years we have had a Continental
Representative with an office in Paris. This post has been filled for over
twenty years by Mr. H. de Boehtlingk, who retired on the 30th
June, 1947, being succeeded by Mr. Richard Haemmerli. Mr. Haemmerli, who is Swiss, is an experienced
Continental banker. After spending three years with the Credit Suisse in
Zurich, and several years with the Societe Generale Alsacienne de Banque, in
Saarbruck, he came to London, where he spent some time with Kleinwort &
Company, merchant bankers. He then went to New York and joined the Guaranty
Trust Company, after which he returned to the Societe Generale Alsacienne de
Banque at their Head Office in Strasbourg, where he supervised the foreign
business of that bank. In 1933, he was appointed as Sub-Manager to the
newly-created Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie in Paris, and
he was put in charge of the Foreign Department.
The rapid development of their foreign
business was due to his organising ability and his experience of Continental,
British and American methods. During the German occupation of France Mr.
Haemmerli was obliged to leave the Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et
1'Industrie, and he had a narrow escape from being interned in a
concentration camp. After the liberation of France, owing to his Swiss
nationality, he did not return to that bank, but became the manager of an
important French commercial company dealing with exports and imports. In
1946, when the retirement of Mr. de Boehtlingk became imminent, the choice of
a successor fell upon Mr. Haemmerli, and after a period as Assistant
Continental Representative he succeeded to Mr. de Boehtlingk's post. In
January, 1947, he visited a number of our branches in the North in order to
become acquainted with the nature of our business and with some of our higher
officials. Mr. Haemmerli has a small
staff in Paris, and his object is to maintain a constant contact with our
Continental correspondents, to supply our bank with up-to-date information on
financial and economic subjects, and generally to assist in the smooth
working of our business abroad. He pays periodic visits to our correspondents
in other countries on the Continent and when important customers visit Paris
he is always ready to help them with his guidance and advice.
Elle aime Paris au printemps…
 Out of
a week of glorious weather, the day assigned for my visit to our Paris Office
was a very fair imitation of Liverpool weather. After breakfast a heavy rain
set in, and, with one eye on the weeping heavens I reluctantly put aside all
thought of frivolous clothes, habited myself in sombre brown and dived into
the familiar warmth and effulgence of the Metro. Due, perhaps, to
inattention, I got off too soon and found myself at the wrong end of the
Boulevard Haussmann facing a longish walk while the clouds consistently
emptied themselves upon Paris.
 I
was, however, greatly distracted by the beauty and variety of the shops upon
my way and by the time my preoccupation had carried me past our Paris office
and I had retraced my steps to it, I was a distinctly sodden object, and
feeling not a little pathetic. It was Mile. Rogivue who ushered me, dripping and
bedraggled, into the office, and the warmth of the welcome which she accorded
me made me forget most of my troubles. Later, from M. Haemmerli's own room, I
was able to appreciate some of the advantages of our Paris Office. Placed as
it is, at 17 bis, Boulevard Haussmann, it is in one of the most attractive
centres in the city, as well as being in the midst of the important banking
and business houses. Practically across the road are the famous Galeries
Lafayette, not far away is the lovely Avenue des Champs Elysees and the Place
de la Concorde, and one is within easy reach of those historic buildings and
monuments which are so large a part of the fascination of Paris. But those
who maintain the office have very little time in which to appreciate the
charm of the city, because the work of the day is seldom finished before 8
p.m.
|
|
Betty Jackson – “made to feel so welcome”
by the Paris Staff…
|
M. Haemmerli, our Paris representative,
who is Swiss by birth and speaks upwards of seven languages, spends much of his
time travelling in Europe, making new contacts and strengthening old ones
among the great financial houses of the continent, and the work is both
arduous and exacting. Travelling must often be done overnight, and M.
Haemmerli rises at 6 a.m. in order to refresh his memory before breakfast
concerning those banking or business personalities he will meet in the day
ahead of him. He has to carry in his mind, not only the financial status of
the Houses and the names and ranks of their representatives, but also the
more personal details about them, their idiosyncrasies and even their
hobbies, in order to make the contact a more friendly one. After breakfast,
the work of the day carries him through business meetings, luncheons and
dinners. He explained diffidently that sometimes he found it hard, during the
course of a business luncheon which was essentially like a hundred others, to
keep his attention firmly fixed on what is being said.
|
|
Yet it is absolutely vital that he
should do so, because the inattention of a second might mean the loss of
important information or give offence. During his “leisure” hours at night he
collates the information of the day, which he returns to the Paris Office to
be typed and put into order and filed away. His assistants are Mile. Helene
Rogivue and Mme. Bliggenstorfer. Mlle. Rogivue, whom I met in the morning,
has been there for three years. It was not until after lunch that I met Mme.
Bliggenstorfer, as her work is now of a part-time nature. She has been
connected with our Paris Office for 23 years, and although she officially
retired from full-time work a few years ago, she has returned to help during the afternoons, to cope with the
enormous flow of work passing through
the office.
I am afraid that, during
that afternoon, I took up a good deal of their time, but it was of tremendous interest to meet them and to
discuss with them the nature of their work and the conditions of life in Paris. Needless to say,
the conversation did not remain strictly technical
for very long. We covered a lot of ground in a comparatively short time, and,
to my shame, I confess that it was all covered
in English. In the face of the very competent English spoken there, I was
diffident about my halting French. Being by nature allergic to statistics, I was awed by the nature and
volume of their tasks. The
financial reports issued by each bank on the continent are received at the
office and analysed by
them. A comparative analysis covering a period of three years is made out for
each report, and some
300 reports are received in the course of a year. In addition, Mme. Bliggenstorfer keeps a set of very fine and
intricate graphs showing the state of various currencies in all the countries
of Europe. Moreover, something like 12 financial papers per day are delivered
to the office, and
these have to be carefully perused for relevant information, which, when
found, is cut out and filed away for future
reference in the very efficient filing system maintained there. All this is quite apart from the general
correspondence of the office and the reports received from M. Haemmerli when he is away, which have
to be sorted and typed. It seemed to me, while I was there, that our Paris Office is, among
other things, a storehouse of information about banking and commerce in all parts of the world,
upon which our Foreign Branches
in England draw from time to time. And it is more than that. It is, in the
extremest sense, an
outpost of the Bank, and a friendly one, too. The memory of the day which I spent
there is one of the happiest which I brought
away with me in a whole fortnight of pleasant recollections.
“The
last time I saw Paris”…
|
 When Mr. Wetherell, our Liverpool Foreign
Branch Manager, took this photograph from the. window of M. Haemmerli’s
office in the Boulevard Haussmann M. Haemmerli could not see why it was of
any special interest. We were glad Mr. Wetherell showed it to us, however,
because we think it is of interest.
Even to be able to say "
Oh, yes, that's the view of Paris I get from my office window "
would have its thrill for many of us, while from the editorial point of
view it gives us the opportunity of reminding our readers that we have a
Paris Office and of telling M. Haemmerli and his colleagues that our
thoughts are often with them.
|
|
|
  At the end of April Mr.
Haemmerli retired after being our Continental representative since June
1947. By the very
nature of his job he came into contact with the principals more than the
staff, although he had the opportunity of meeting a number of us at the
various District Dinners at which he was a guest from time to time.
Probably the first time he met a number of the staff all together from all
over the country was in Paris in 1949 when the first Bank holiday party
passed through on their way to and from Switzerland and his services nearly
had to be called upon in a big way when it appeared that a late train on
the homeward journey might cause us to miss the boat train which would have
had the result of leaving 75 people stranded. We shall never forget the
comfort it was to us to know that he had prepared a plan to deal with this
situation as soon as we advised him that it might arise.
Mr. Haemmerli travelled in
the course of his job to many European countries regularly and he
accompanied our principals on their travels on the Continent. A man of
great personal charm, cultured and erudite, he was a wonderful companion
and the arduous nature of the journeys which our principals are called upon
to undertake was smoothed and made as comfortable and congenial as possible
by his calm efficiency. At a
special function in our Paris office Mr. M. Conacher, our Chief General
Manager, made the presentation of an old London silver tankard, made in
1765, on behalf of the many subscribers. The Chief General Manager spoke in
the warmest terms of Mr. Haemmerli's work for the Bank. Mr. Haemmerli was
obviously much touched by the references which were made to him. Later, Madame Berthe added her own tribute at a private
ceremony and described Mr. Haemmerli as being the very embodiment of the
Bank so far as she was concerned. We all
wish Mr. Haemmerli every happiness, and the blessing of good health in all
the years to come.
 To succeed Monsieur
Haemmerli as Continental Representative the Bank has appointed eur Francois
Garelli. This appointment
is one of the most interesting which from time to time, the Bank has to
make, and considerable care is used in selecting the man to hold it. In addition to being a good linguist he
has to have those qualities of character which make him acceptable as the
Bank's representative wherever he goes, plus shrewdness and business acumen
of the highest order. He accompanies the bank's representatives on their various
journeyings and must himself travel constantly in order
to maintain contacts, keep a finger on the pulse of European trade and help and advise in
all kinds of commercial transactions in which the bank is engaged.
Mr Garelli was born in
France in 1920 and his father was formerly General Manager of the Ottoman
Bank. His childhood and youth were
spent in various European countries, including England (where he lived for
five years), Switzerland Yugoslavia
(Belgrade) and Turkey (Itsanbul).
He attended a French college at Fribourg,
Switzerland, for classical French studies and the
University of Geneva for economic studies, and it was at this University
that he obtained a 'licence' degree and
then a 'doctorat es sciences economiques'
degree. During the war Garelli volunteered for the French First and served in an anti-tank company during the 1944-45
campaigns in Eastern France and Germany. His banking
career began in London as a trainee in the Ottoman Bank. He then went to the Banque de Paris et
des Pays-Bas, Paris, where he spent over two years studying the organisation
and functions of each department. In 1950, he joined the Ottoman Bank in
France and was chiefly engaged in the finance of foreign trade. He became
Assistant Manager, mainly in charge of the finance of exports. From 1957 to
1961 he was Manager at Marseilles.
|
,
|
