Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

176
Paul Martin Howell
In 1855 the company's president, Charles Laffitte, was busily sounding various French groups on the possibility of a merger, and both the Pereires and Rothschdld and his allies had French and Swiss concessions whàdi would have fòt nicely with the proposed network in Savoy. There were abundant added dnducements to become involved in railroads in the Kingdom of Sardinia: it was astride both the coastal route from Naples and Tuscany to France and the most direct transalpine route from Italy to France and western Switzerland; the government's well-known deter-mination to conquer the Alps could only work to the advantage of any private group involved; and the best-placed financial and railroading combination in the kingdom could expect to be the front-runner if and when the state sold its lines a move which could be antìcipated because of the strength of liberal economie doctrine in the kingdom's ruling circles and because of the heavy financial burdens entailed by Cavour's program of diplomatic initiatives, military build up, and economie develop-ment. Toward the end of 1855, Cavour personally approached both the Pereires and Rothschdld in an attempt to entice them into projeets in the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Pereires vented the idea of installing the Crédit Mobilier or an offshoot in Turin. By then Bolmida had already talked to both sides about enlarging the scope and capital of the Cassa del Commercio and he had been conductdng serdous negotiations with Rothschild since August. At the end of December he was able to present Rothschild with an ultimatum which was quickly accepted.44)
The financial deal between Rothschild and the Cassa del Commercio took final shape between the start of the new year and the beginning of March 1856. Cavour and the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance and on the Council of State carefully reviewed the technical features of Bolmida's proposed changes in the operational characterdstics of the Cassa del Com­mercio and left thedr imprint on the bank's new charter, which was approved at the end of Aprii 1856. The Cassa del Commercio's capital was raised from eight to forty milhon lire. Rothschild guaranteed half of the increase and the bank's existing shareholders took the rest. Opera-tionally the bank became a full-fledged investment bank free to deal in the seourities of other joint-stock stock companies and to promote new ventures; it was also granted the faculty of issuing its own bonds, subject to certain restiictions, but this was never used. To make the formai change clear, the bank was requdred to append the desdgnatdon Credito Mobiliare to its officiai name, and thereafter it was commonly referred to in the Kingdom of Sardinia simply as the Credito Mobiliare or even just as the Mobiliare.45) In practical ternis, the transformation merely
22 Sept. 1853 and 31 Oct. 1854, in Cavour, JVwov* lettere, pp. 171473 and 11-12, 175-176, respectively.
44) Gille, Les invesiissements, pp, 134, 156-158, 165, and Rothschild, pp. 169-172; Cameron, France, pp. 214-217, 238; and Cavour to De La Rue, 17 and 25 Dee. 1855, in Cavour, Nouvelles tettres, pp. 503-504.
45) MAIC, b. 155, f. 107, sf. 1, minutes of CCI shareholder meeting of 28 Feb. 1856; sf. 2, Bolmida to Ministry of Finance, 9 March 1856, with draft