Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim

Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim (1800-1873) was a banker from Mainz who built a family banking network across Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and London in the mid-19th century.

Bischoffsheim founded a private bank in Amsterdam in the early 1820s, opened Bischoffsheim, Goldschmidt & Cie in Paris in 1846 and in London in 1860, and in 1863 merged these houses into the Nederlandsche Credit- en Deposito Bank in Amsterdam. On 27 January 1872 that bank combined with the Banque de Paris, founded in 1869 by a group including Adrien Delahante, Edmond Joubert, Henri Cernuschi and Eugène Goüin, to form the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. In its first year the new bank co-led, with Crédit Lyonnais, the syndicate that placed a third of the French government's loan to pay the Franco-Prussian War indemnity. Renamed Paribas in 1982, it became the investment-banking half of BNP Paribas in 2000.