ABSTRACT
A brief look at the history of the Banco de Portugal confirms how well the general theme of the conference was chosen. In the nineteenth century, the Banco de Portugal was a note-issuing commercial bank whose main business was discounting commercial paper and undertak ing foreign exchange transactions. Established as a joint stock company, its shares were held by the public. The shareholders, not the govern ment, elected its Board of Directors.1 It was only at the end of the nineteenth century that the Bank was granted a monopoly over the note issue in Portugal (1891) and became the bank of the state (1887). Concomitantly, it had to accept a certain loss of independence. In 1888 a government-appointed governor was empowered to veto decisions by the Board of Directors. All the other modern functions and instruments were formally given to the Banco de Portugal after 1918, that is during the period on which the conference concentrated. In fact, however, they were gradually emerging from the 1870s onwards as a result of a combination of public and political expectations with the more immedi ate economic interests of the institution itself, as is shown by Jaime Reis in Chapter 5 (The Bank of Portugal’s First Century: From 1846 to the Second World War).
