Banque Industrielle de Chine
The Banque Industrielle de Chine was a French bank with its main activities in China and French Indochina. It was created in 1913, expanded rapidly, but closed in 1921 because of the political context in China, causing a political controversy in France. Its activity was continued by the Franco-Chinese Bank, in China until the 1950s and in Indochina until the 1970s.
Former BIC headquarters at 74 rue Saint-Lazare, Paris
Share certificate, 1920
Philippe Berthelot (center), the BIC's original promoter and brother of its founding chairman, at the Washington Naval Conference in 1921 with Prime Minister Aristide Briand (right) and ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand (left)
Horace Finaly, chief executive of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, was instrumental in the BIC's restructuring
The Franco-Chinese Bank, in French Banque Franco-Chinoise (BFC), full name Banque Franco-Chinoise pour le Commerce et l’Industrie, was a French bank with operations in China and French Indochina, and later in the Indian Ocean and the French West Indies. In 1925 it succeeded the Société française de gérance de la Banque industrielle de Chine, an asset management company that had been formed in October 1922 following the closure of the Banque Industrielle de Chine.
Former BFC headquarters in Paris, 74 rue Saint-Lazare
China Merchants Steam Navigation Company building on No. 9 Bund, where the BFC had its Shanghai branch
Former branch building in Tianjin (rebuilt in 1933), now Northern Finance Institute
Former branch building in Saigon, originally built for the Société financière française et coloniale in 1926 and remodeled for the BFC in the late 1930s; until 2015 Mekong Housing Bank and now BIDV in Ho Chi Minh City