Private banks are banks owned by either an individual or a general partner(s) with limited partner(s). Private banks are not incorporated. In any such case, the creditors can look to both the "entirety of the bank's assets" as well as the entirety of the sole-proprietor's/general-partners' assets.
These banks have a long tradition in Switzerland, dating back to at least the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). Private banks also have a long tradition in the UK where C. Hoare & Co. has been in business since 1672.
There were many private banks in Europe. However most have now become incorporated companies, so the term is rarely true anymore. Today, the term "private bank" can also refer to the financial institution specializing in financial advice and services for high net worth individuals (private banking).
"Private banks" can also refer to non-government owned banks in general, in contrast to government-owned (or nationalized) banks, which were prevalent in communist, socialist and some social democratic states in the 20th century.
Famous quotes containing the words private and/or bank:
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)