Hoare's Bank, a Family Business Since 1672

This article in Barron's Penta features what must be one of the world's oldest family-owned banks, C. Hoare & Co.

…the tiny bank is still 100% owned and run by the Hoare family, with the 11th generation of family managers consisting of seven Hoare cousins sitting on the partners' board, each "enjoying" unlimited personal liability, which means they are personally on the hook, right down to their cufflinks. Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Lord Byron once kept their guineas at the bank; in more recent decades, it's been the likes of Agatha Christie and, according to the British media, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

Online, Hoare & Co. just published Through the Years, Tales from the Hoare's Bank Archive. Fascinating! A letter written by a women who saw the Statue of Liberty in Paris … the probate inventory of an Elizabethan gentleman's estate … an 1800 income-tax return. And this stock certificate from the time of the South Sea Bubble. (Please, no wisecracks relating to Facebook's IPO!)