Union Banking Corporation

Last updated
Union Banking Corporation
Industry Banking
Founder Prescott Bush

The Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a New York investment bank incorporated in 1924 in the United States. During World War II, under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, the United States government seized the bank's assets pending investigation of the bank's business involving a former party member of the Nazi government in Germany, Fritz Thyssen. The now-former U.S. Senator Prescott Bush was a founding member and is included among its seven directors whose entire collective shareholdings in Union Banking Corp. were shares wholly owned by, and held on behalf of, the Thyssen empire's Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rottendam. [1]

Contents

Seizure

According to an October 5, 1942 report from the Office of Alien Property Custodian, Union Banking was owned by Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., a Dutch bank. The memo from August 18, 1941, states "My investigation produced no evidence as to the ownership of this Dutch bank." [1]

The Dutch bank was alleged to be affiliated with United Steel Works,[ relevant? ] a German company. Fritz Thyssen and his brother, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, had the Dutch bank and the steel firm as part of their business and financial empire according to the government agency. Fritz Thyssen resigned from the Council of State after November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht , was arrested in 1940, and spent the remainder of the war in a sanatorium and in concentration camps. [ citation needed ] The APC documents say "Whether any or all part of the funds held by Union Banking Corporation, or companies associated with it, belong to Fritz Thyssen could not be established in this investigation." [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC dissolved in the 1950s.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris III of Bulgaria</span> Tsar of Bulgaria from 1918 to 1943

Boris III, originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver, was the Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1918 until his death in 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prescott Bush</span> American politician (1895–1972)

Prescott Sheldon Bush Sr. was an American banker and Republican Party politician. After working as a Wall Street executive investment banker, he represented Connecticut in the United States Senate from 1952 to 1963.A member of the Bush family, he was the father of President George H. W. Bush, and the paternal grandfather of President George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

The merger of four major firms into the German Steel Trust in 1926 was modeled on the U.S. Steel corporation in the U.S. The goal was to move beyond the limitations of the old cartel system by incorporating advances simultaneously inside a single corporation. The new company emphasized rationalization of management structures and modernization of the technology; it employed a multi-divisional structure and used return on investment as its measure of success. it represented the "Americanization" of the German steel industry because of its internal structure, management methods, use of technology, and emphasis on mass production replicated the Steel Trust developed a multi-divisional structure and aimed at return on investment as a measure of success. The chief difference was that consumer capitalism as an industrial strategy did not seem plausible to German steel industrialists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917</span> U.S. law

The Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) of 1917 is a United States federal law, enacted on October 6, 1917, in response to the United States declaration of war on Germany on April 6, 1917. It continues to give the President of the United States the power to oversee or restrict any and all trade between the United States and its enemies in times of war. TWEA was amended in 1933 by the Emergency Banking Act to extend the president’s authority also in peace time. It was amended again in 1977 by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to restrict again the application of TWEA only to times of war, while the IEEPA was intended to be used in peace time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banking in Switzerland</span>

Banking in Switzerland dates to the early 18th century through Switzerland's merchant trade and over the centuries has grown into a complex and regulated international industry. Banking is seen as emblematic of Switzerland and the country has been one of the largest offshore financial centers and tax havens in the world since the mid-20th century, with a long history of banking secrecy and client confidentiality reaching back to the early 1700s. Starting as a way to protect wealthy European banking interests, Swiss banking secrecy was codified in 1934 with the passage of a landmark federal law, the Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks. These laws were used to protect assets of persons being persecuted by Nazi authorities but have also been used by people and institutions seeking to illegally evade taxes, hide assets, or to commit other financial crime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fritz Thyssen</span> German businessman (1873–1951)

Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families. He was an early supporter of the Nazi Party but later broke with it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. Roland Harriman</span> American financier and philanthropist

Edward Roland Noel "Bunny" Harriman was an American financier and philanthropist.

John Howard Buchanan is a freelance journalist, and was a fringe Republican candidate in the 2004 Presidential election. Buchanan was previously based in Florida and lives in rural Georgia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dresdner Bank</span> Former German bank

Dresdner Bank AG was a German bank, founded in 1872 in Dresden, then headquartered in Berlin from 1884 to 1945 and in Frankfurt from 1963 onwards after a postwar hiatus. Long Germany's second-largest bank behind Deutsche Bank, it was eventually acquired by Commerzbank in May 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.</span> American private investment bank

Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) is the oldest and one of the largest private investment banks in the United States. In 1931, the merger of Brown Brothers & Co. and Harriman Brothers & Co. formed the current BBH.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Office of Alien Property Custodian</span> Former U.S. government agency

The Office of Alien Property Custodian was an office within the government of the United States during World War I and again during World War II, serving as a custodian to property that belonged to US enemies. The office was created in 1917 by Executive Order 2729-A under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 (TWEA) in order to "assume control and dispose of enemy-owned property in the United States and its possessions."

Heinrich Thyssen, after 22 June 1907 Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva, was a Hungarian-German entrepreneur and art collector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H. Upmann</span> Brand of Cuban cigars

H. Upmann is a Cuban brand of premium cigars established by banker Hermann Dietrich Upmann. The brand is currently owned by a British corporation, Imperial Brands. The cigars are manufactured by Habanos S.A., the state-owned tobacco company in Cuba, and Altadis in La Romana, Dominican Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Werner von Clemm</span> German-American banker and Nazi collaborator (1897–1989)

Werner Conrad Clemm von Hohenberg was an American banker born into a German family that married into the German nobility, the Nazi Party and prominent American families. His father-in-law was a Vice President of Citibank. In 1922, Werner immigrated to the United States. Prior to this he had served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He was a representative of the German international banking firm Hardy & Co. and an employee of the Pioneer Import Corp., which imported materials from Germany and handled his cousin and Nazi diplomat, Joachim von Ribbentrop's champagne business.

The World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks was launched in 1995 to retrieve deposits made into the three largest Swiss banks by victims of Nazi persecution during and prior to World War II. WJC negotiations were initiated with the Government of Switzerland and Swiss banks, and later expanded to cover Swiss insurance companies, over burdensome proof-of-ownership requirements for accounts and insurance policies. Strong support from both federal and state United States politicians and officials, threats of sanctions against the three Swiss banks, as well as leaked documents from a bank guard pressured a settlement of the suit in 1998 in a U.S. court for multiple classes of people affected by government and banking practices. The Swiss government itself was not a signatory to the deal. As of early 2020, US$1.29 billion has been disbursed to approximately 458,400 claimants.

The Al Taqwa Bank is a financial institution incorporated in 1988. It is based out of The Bahamas, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. The Bank was accused by the United States of having links to Islamist terror organizations, alleging that it was a major source of funds for the operations of Osama bin Laden and his associates. Al Taqwa bank was subsequently placed on a list of entities and individuals associated with Al Qaeda that is maintained by the UN Security Council. On August 2, 2010, the bank was removed from the list. None of the key individuals affiliated with the bank have ever been charged of any crime, whether by the United States or any other government.

The Fritz Thyssen Foundation is a private nonprofit foundation in Germany, created on 7 July 1959 by Amélie Thyssen and Anita Gräfin Zichy-Thyssen and named in memory of prominent iron and steel manufacturer August Thyssen and his son Fritz, who became a major financial backer of the ascendant Nazi Party in the early 1930s.

Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. was a Dutch bank that provided financial services for the House of Orange-Nassau and German industrialist and financier of Adolf Hitler, Fritz Thyssen. It was founded in 1916 by August Thyssen. One of its subsidiaries was the American bank Union Banking Corporation. The funds for Hitler's Brown House were routed through Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and Union Banking Corporation. Thyssen also routed funds meant for South America through Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and then Union Banking Corporation. In August 1946, the clandestine Operation Juliana was organised to re-appropriate the Orange-Nassau stock portfolio that had been transferred to Berlin. Prior to the Second World War, Thyssen used Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart to route iron imports destined for Vereingte Stahlwerke AG into Germany. The bank was later converted into TBG AG by heir Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Business collaboration with Nazi Germany</span>

A number of international companies have been accused of having collaborated with Nazi Germany before their home countries' entry into World War II, though it has been debated whether the term "collaboration" is applicable to business dealings outside the context of overt war. Accused companies include General Motors, IT&T, and Eastman Kodak.

References

  1. "Image: Bush%20Documents0008.jpg, (1271 × 2098 px)". hnn.us. Archived from the original on 2012-07-11. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  2. "Image: Bush%20Documents0014.jpg, (1271 × 2123 px)". hnn.us. Archived from the original on 2012-07-13. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
  3. Campbell, Duncan (September 25, 2004). "How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
  4. "Records of the Office of the Alien Property Custodian". U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  5. "Vesting Order Number 248". Federal Register (7 F.R. 5205).
  6. "Hitler's Angel has 3 millions in N.Y. Bank" (PDF). Washington Post possible copyright violation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2009-01-27.