The history of our bank
We look back with pride on more than 220 years of tradition in working with private investors and their families.
The history of Marcard, Stein & Co started in 1790 when the bank J.H. Stein was founded in Cologne. Marcard, Stein & Co founded based on the brokerage firm N. Delmonte & Consorten, which was established in 1893. In 1923 Enno von Marcard became a trainee at the bank, which had since changed its name to Delmonte & Co. In 1932 he became a co-partner and, four years later in 1936, he assumed sole ownership of the bank. In 1941 the bank was renamed Marcard & Co. By that time the business of the bank covered the full range of banking services.
In the post-war years after Second World War, a period of continuous growth started which Enno von Marcard promoted with great effort and energy well into old age. Under his leadership, Marcard & Co became a ‘foreign trade bank’ in 1949, which at the time was an extraordinary privilege. Enno von Marcard remained a personally liable shareholder of Marcard & Co until 1984, and he was the honorary chairman of the bank until his death in 1993. In its years as a foreign trade bank, the interest of foreign banks grew and Banque Indosuez (later Crédit Agricole Indosuez) acquired a considerable stake.
In 1987 the merger of the two private banks Marcard & Co, Hamburg, and J.H. Stein, Cologne, created today’s private bank MARCARD, STEIN & CO.
In July 1998 the owner-run private bank M.M.Warburg & CO in Hamburg acquired all of the shares of Crédit Agricole Indosuez. The admission of Marcard, Stein & Co to the Warburg Group in 1999 was the beginning of a strategy that focuses exclusively on the family office. This was the starting point for the developments that lead to the extraordinary position of Marcard, Stein & Co, being the only private bank in Germany that clearly defines family office services as its core business. Marcard, Stein & Co combines these services with the benefits of a traditional fully licensed bank.
Thomas Fischer, Speaker of the Board of Directors, has spent over 20 years building up the family office at Marcard, Stein & Co. He has successfully established the family office bank as a trustworthy partner to numerous families of entrepreneurs. With his experience as a family officer and his personal responsibility for the company, he makes a crucial contribution to successful, long-lasting client relations. Thomas Borghardt has been bringing his extensive experience in advising families of entrepreneurs to the Board of Directors since 2013.
‘Sharing entrepreneurial responsibility for the wealth and assets of our client families and having an in-depth understanding of the particularities of cross-generational assets have always been what our bank has strived for.’
Thomas R. Fischer,
Speaker of the Board of Directors