William Brandt's Sons & Co. Ltd was an Anglo-German merchant bank and accepting house in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The bank was established by the Brandts, a German mercantile family, from Hamburg. E. H. Brandt opened his first office in London in 1805 where his postal address was Batson's Coffee House. A branch of the firm had also been opened in Archangel, Russia in 1802. In 1861 the company became insolvent but Augustus Brandt and others managed to secure 10,000 pounds to save the company.
The firm traded exclusively with Russia (particularly in Archangel, Riga and St. Petersburg) until 1875 when it began trading in Argentine grain movements and meat refrigeration. It also had interests in sugar and cotton mills. It took over the Calcutta house of Scholvin and Co. in 1886 and thereby extended its interests to India. The company had the name William Brandt's Sons and Company Limited at the time with offices at 4 Fenchurch Avenue in the City of London.
Brandt's was smaller than many leading merchant banks operating in London in these years. It had capital of 0.35 million pounds in 1880 rising to 0.75 million pounds by 1904 and one million by 1914. Brandt's belonged to the Accepting House Committee that was set up at the beginning of the First World War and acceptances accounted for a substantial part of its business. By 1914, acceptance liabilities in Russia accounted for less than 10 percent of Brandt's business and the largest portion of acceptance business was with the United States (almost 35 percent).
The bank is first mentioned in the London Banks directory in 1894. In that year its partners were Alfred Ernst Brandt, Arthur Henry Brandt and Augustus Ferdinand Brandt. Henry Bernhard Brandt and Augustus Philip Brandt also became partners in 1895 but Alfred had ceased to be a partner in the following year. Rudolph Ernst Brandt joined the firm in 1898, replacing Arthur.
Brandt's is no longer in existence but the date of the winding up of the company is not known. It was still trading in 1960, when its most infamous former employee, John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, resigned from a position he held with the bank. It was taken over by National and Grindlays Bank in 1971 or 1972.