All Banking and Financial Houses

Private banking and merchant-finance institutions of the medieval and early modern world, built around a single family or house rather than a modern corporate or central-bank structure. Belongs here: the Medici Bank and the Fugger banking and merchant house as the defining merchant-banking dynasties of Renaissance Europe, and the Bank of England as the earliest institution of its kind still traceable as a single continuous organization from this era. Does not belong here: a present-day multilateral financial institution such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, filed under International and Intergovernmental Organizations, and an industrial corporation, filed under Industrial and Commercial Corporations.