Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Trust Company Failures and Institutional Change in New York, 1875-1925

My paper "Trust Company Failures and Institutional Change in New York, 1875-1925" is now available under First View at Enterprise and Society.

Here are the first two paragraphs


The State of New York created the first trust company in 1822, when
it granted a corporate charter to the Farmers’ Fire Insurance and
Loan Company, later renamed Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company,
and authorized it to act as a trustee. As the name suggests, Farmers
and other early trust companies, like the New York Life Insurance
and Trust Company and the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance
Company, also sold insurance, and they provided trusts as an alternative
to insurance. Trust companies later used their trust powers
to facilitate the development of corporate finance by serving as registrars
and transfer agents for corporate securities and as trustees for
corporate mortgages. Trust companies also accepted deposits; by the
middle of the nineteenth century, some of these deposits could be withdrawn
on demand including by check. Thus, by the late nineteenth
century, trust companies in New York occupied a unique position in
the financial system by combining functions associated with banks
with functions associated with trustees.

Between 1875 and 1925, the number of trust companies in New York
State increased from ten to 110, and the total resources of trust companies
increased more rapidly than those of state banks or savings
banks. Trust companies have been characterized as early examples
of “shadow banks,” operating outside the laws and regulations that
applied to commercial banks. However, as with other financial institutions,
New York State trust companies rarely failed. Between 1875
and 1925, the superintendent of banks only intervened eleven times
to deal with troubled trust companies, and in several of these cases
the trust company reopened. Despite this rarity, these failures provide
a path to understanding the overall success of trust companies.
The path leads through institutions: failures played a leading role in
shaping the institutions that governed trust companies. Consequently,
failures shaped the expectations and actions of everyone involved
with trust companies: depositors, shareholders, and executives.


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