Abraham Goldsmid
(circa 1756-1810), FinancierRegency Portraits Catalogue Entry
Sitter in 1 portrait
A financier and philanthropist who, as an associate of the British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, provided primary financial support to British military campaigns against France during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-9). With his brother Benjamin, Goldsmid set up as a financial broker in 1777. They negotiated several important government loans, breaking a monopoly on public loans enjoyed by England's leading banking firms. The brothers eventually became the largest loan contractors of their day. Opposition of British bankers to a proposed £14,000,000 Goldsmid loan to the government, followed by a lapse of the firm's solvency, resulted in the collapse of the firm and Goldsmid's suicide.
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