André Langrand-Dumonceau (1826–1900) was a Belgian financier, banker and entrepreneur and a major figure in European financial world of the 1860s.[1]
He was born in 1826 in the Belgian village of Vossem. He started his career in financial services, helped by his elder brother, who worked for a Belgian branch of a French insurance company. By the age of 36 he was in control of eleven companies across Europe.[2]
He was involved in an attempt to build a "Catholic financial empire", a counterweight to the perceived Jewish dominance of the financial sector.[1][3][4] He received international recognition, including a title of count at the Papal court, and "an international reputation as a financial genius".[5] His fortune collapsed in the late 1860s, triggering a major financial-political scandal in Belgium.[6]
During the period from the 1850s to 1870 he was involved with managing over twenty companies, including banks, and insurance and railway companies, a number of which he had founded;[3] including Royale Belge.[6] He received backing from a number of notable figures, including Pope Pius IX, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, Napoleon III of France, and King Leopold of Belgium.[3]
His financial plan, however, was unsound, being built on using one company's equity capital to take up the loan capital of another.[4] By the late 1860s, the strain of fund transfers on his network became too much to bear.[3] In the financial Crash of 1870 he declared personal bankruptcy and fled into exile; he was accused of theft, bribery and criminal recklessness, and was condemned in absentia after a trial that ran from 1872 to 1879.[3] He died in Rome in 1900.[3]
