ABSTRACT
On October 20, 1942, the weekly meeting of the “Comite cTorganisation des banques” took place in its offices on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris in the middle of the banking district of that time. On the agenda was the fate of the small Slayer-Royer Bank in Grenoble. Created in August 1940, according to a general French law organizing the economy just after the Debacle, it had been instrumental in proposing, for the first time in modern French history, a text regulating the banking system and granting the right to receive deposits. In Paris, some branches of the 19th Century Haute Banque remained alive, though they were much less significant to the economy than before 1914. Numerous local banks remained active at the eve of Second World War, though their end had been announced in the 1880’s. Local banks were active in certain departments. About 250 were still in existence in 1940.
