Laurent-Antoine Pagnerre

Laurent-Antoine Pagnerre (1805-1854) was a Paris bookseller, publisher and politician active in the 1848 revolution.

After the 1847 economic crisis and the February Revolution of 1848 froze credit in Paris, the provisional government created discount banks by decree in March 1848. Pagnerre became the first director of the Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris, whose ~$24 million (20 million francs) of capital came in thirds from private subscribers, many of them booksellers and publishers, from the City of Paris and from the State. Hippolyte Biesta succeeded him the same year. The Comptoir became a private company in 1854, opened branches in Shanghai and Calcutta in 1860, and in 1966 merged with BNCI to form Banque Nationale de Paris, the BNP half of BNP Paribas.