A 4%-os államkötvények jegyzői 1881-ben

Absztrakt

Since Adam Smith, the market as a mechanism directed by invisible hands has been a conventional vision in economic thinking. We hardly know anything of the subscribers, the people who hide behind the numbers published in the press (which one cannot regard as more than rough estimations) when new bonds are issued. Undoubtedly, sources that could identify the “invisible subscribing hands,” could only emerge from the archives of the banking houses that constituted the consortium issuing bonds. This paper makes use of three types of sources: firstly, the outgoing correspondence and capital-account books of the London N. M. Rothschild firm transacted around the May 19, 1881 issuing; secondly, the subscription lists found in the dossiers of the Parisian house the Rothschild frères; last but not least, the surviving managerial record books of the Budapest banks (Hungarian General Credit Bank, First Domestic Saving Bank of Pest) that were interested in subscription. The bond issue in 1881 was part of a conversion transaction during which the proprietors of the up to then 6% Hungarian gold rents had the chance to change these for new, 4% Hungarian gold rent bonds. On the other hand, those who formerly did not invest their capital in Hungarian annuity, could, for cash, subscribe the new issuing, too. At the public subscription on May 19, 1881 the 160 million Forint nominal value quantity was 20–25 times oversubscribed. Theoretically, in the case of conversion, taking up loans is unnecessary, since conversion is concerned with the clearing, and renewal of an old investment, and not with a new one. The examination of the 1881 Hungarian gold rent issue shows that gold rent conversion was in reality made up of two parallel transactions, since it provided for both the purchasing of old stocks and the issuing of new ones, in order to make them correspond with each other when accounting towards the state. In the London, Paris and Central-European fields the peculiarities of single markets clearly stand out. The action radius of London and Paris was international. The former reached from Naples to Hamburg, the latter from Barcelona to Bucharest, as if straddling Budapest with its narrow stock market of local interest (and was tightly attached to Vienna anyway because of the exchange rates). The supply and demand for old and new Hungarian rents best achieved equilibrium on the Austrian–German markets, since Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna flexibly cooperated with each other. The Bontoux-crisis bursting out at the beginning of 1882 put an end to the stock-market boom, and the conversion of the Hungarian gold rent could only close at the end of 1884.