Aus:
The Money Market Review, 14. November 1868. S. 448/449.
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The Troubles of Shareholders in Banking and other Jt. Stock Cos.

Mr. William White, a banker of 40 years standing, has published in one Manchester paper, about this subject. Nach ihm viele Banks „are buying their own shares to keep up the price, as case with Birmingham Banking Co. and Royal Bank of Liverpool .“

The banks which buy up their own shares will generally take care to have them registered in the name of nominees, so that the transaction may not appear upon the register.

Limited banks are required by law to exhibit at their head office a statement of their assets and liabilities according to a prescribed form „or as near thereto as circumstances will permit.“; and some avail themselves of this liberty to vary the form thus as to conceal the amount of their overdrawn accounts by blending them into one item with bills of exchange, or by merely stating the whole of their assets in one sum. In either case the real position of the bank not seen. Uniformity of accounts is as much required in other joint stock banks as in Railway Cos. Sir William Hutt’s bill would have given us this uniformity; but that Bill, instead of being supported by Board of Trade with all the weight of Government, was opposed by that Board, and consequently withdrawn.

The great vice of „Lancashire banking“, White says, „is making large advances to customers on overdrawn accounts, thereby locking up the capital of the bank banks, and jeopardising their very existence.“ And the auditing of some of the banks accounts seems to be equally lax and perilous. „I have now lying before me“, says White, „the reports of 2 banks, in one of which two of the directors have kindly audited their own accounts; whilst in the other case the balance sheet does not balance by a difference of nearly half a million. Yet in this latter case the auditors certified the balance-sheet as ‚examined and found correct. correct‘, and the report was received and adopted.[“] He also mentions two other bank reports „in which the rebate on bills on hand is deducted from the amount of such bills, instead of from profit and loss account.“ Such things could not occur in the midst of a great mercantile community like Lancashire, if the leading members of that community were prompt to expose and denounce them. Even White does not name the banks he denounces. The sickly and sentimental delicacy  Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen (!) with which these things are regarded by mercantile men, otherwise men of probity and honour, is a great social evil.