Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. KG, commonly known as Berenberg Bank and also branded as simply Berenberg, is a multinational full-service private and merchant bank headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. It is considered the world's oldest merchant bank.
Headquarters in Hamburg
Coat of arms of the Berenberg family (detail, 1710)
Cornelius Berenberg (1634–1711)
Johann Berenberg (1718–1772)
A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate and/or finance production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.
Johann Hinrich Gossler, a prominent Hamburg merchant banker of the 18th century