Kleinwort, Benson

Kleinwort Benson is one of the most distinguished international investment banks in the City of London, becoming part of the Dresdner Bank Group in 1995. This is the story of how two families, the Kleinworts and the Bensons, emerged from medieval beginnings in Holstein and the Lake District to seek their fortunes in Hamburg, Cuba, and Liverpool, before arriving in the 1850s in London. There they founded two very different merchant banks, which merged in 1961 to create Kleinwort Benson Lonsdale, later Kleinwort Benson Group. The Kleinwort Benson story mirrors both the spectacular growth of…