A hundred and fifty years read through the documents that survived them — share warrants, survey plans, a letter of 26 October 1912.
Franz Philippson had come to Brussels from Magdeburg in 1865 as a clerk in the Errera banking house. Six years later, barely twenty, he opened his own. He would direct it for more than fifty years, until his death — the beginning of a line that has now run through six generations.
He founded the Compagnie Générale de Chemins de Fer Secondaires — today CFE — and with it took the house into railways, zinc and telegraphy, from Congo to Brazil, Argentina and Canada. Infrastructure, for him, was never only an asset class: it was the thing that let people and goods move at all.
From 1896 he represented the Brussels community on the administrative council of the Jewish Colonization Association. He became its vice-president in 1901 and its president in 1919 — three decades in which the bank's balance sheet and the family's obligations were never kept in separate rooms.
The ICA's first organised Jewish settlement in Brazil was surveyed in the region of Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul: 4,472 hectares for thirty-seven families — some two hundred and sixty-seven people from Bessarabia. Each household received land, a house, tools, oxen, cows, a wagon and a horse. The colony was named Philippson, after the man then chairing the association.
Compagnie de Chemins de Fer au Brésil: incorporated in Portland, Maine, on 9 November 1906, with administrative seats in London, Paris and São Paulo and an authorised capital of fifty million dollars. The bearer shares — engraved by Waterlow & Sons of London Wall, a locomotive crossing a trestle bridge above the title — are among the most striking documents in the family's archive.
A hand-written letter to F. Philippson, folded twice, still legible after a century. Its writer is in town for an international conference, has secured an invitation for the Ezra society of Antwerp, mentions that Mr Montefiore will arrive tomorrow, and asks — courteously, at length — whether he might call. Business, community and manners, in a single page.
Printed in Paris by Imprimerie Chaix, the company's own system map runs from Porto Velho to Montevideo. Its legend distinguishes lines in operation from lines to be built, and — tellingly — shades the land itself by purpose: colonisation, lumber, cattle, rubber. Santa Maria sits on it, a few centimetres from the Philippson colony.
Franz died in 1929, president of the ICA. Jules — who had joined the bank in 1904 — succeeded him. In 1934–35 he took a decisive part in reforming the Belgian banking system, and left a mark on Belgian finance across a career of fifty-seven years.
Alain Philippson, fourth generation, joined Banque Degroof in 1972 and as managing partner played a central role in the management buy-out that brought the family back onto the share register. He chaired the bank from 2002 to 2018.
The sale of Degroof Petercam closed a hundred and fifty years of banking. Four thousand miles away, at Itaara in Rio Grande do Sul, the 1904 monument and cemetery of the Philippson colony — listed as a national historic site in 1994 — are still there, with the name cut into the stone.
PIC1871 is not a successor to the bank; it is what the family did next. The mandate is unchanged in substance — patient capital, held across generations rather than quarters, and obligations that do not end at the balance sheet.
Nine passages in the life of one house. Each opens where it stands.
In 1886, Banque Philippson was entrusted with the conversion of the City of Brussels' debt. The operation marked a turning point for the young institution, demonstrating its ability to structure and execute transactions of public importance.
What had begun fifteen years earlier as Franz Philippson's independent banking house was becoming a recognised force in Belgian finance. The transaction established a reputation for technical competence, discretion and long-term thinking that would shape the family's approach to capital for generations.
The First World War placed both the family and the bank under extraordinary pressure. Members of the Philippson family served during the conflict, and Franz's son Jacques lost his life in the war.
In occupied Brussels, Franz and Jules continued to navigate a financial system transformed by scarcity, instability and occupation. Franz participated in the Consortium des Banques and remained involved in efforts to preserve Belgium's financial institutions. He was also drawn into discreet attempts to explore a possible negotiated peace.
Banking had ceased to be simply a commercial undertaking. It had become a matter of national resilience.
After Franz's death in 1929, the second generation carried the family enterprise forward through two very different personalities. Jules devoted himself to banking and public finance, while Maurice combined finance with science, technology and industrial investment.
A decorated veteran of the First World War, Maurice pursued interests spanning aviation, radio, wireless communications and emerging technologies. Together, the brothers reflected a characteristic that would remain present across later generations: preserving an established institution while continuing to look toward industries and ideas that did not yet belong to the mainstream.
The Second World War broke the physical link between the Philippson family and the institution they had built. Faced with antisemitic persecution and occupation, members of the family left Belgium.
Jules continued his activities from Britain while the bank remained in Brussels under the stewardship of Jean Degroof and Richard Weitzel. For the first time since 1871, Banque Philippson had to function without the family present in Belgium.
When the war ended, the Philippsons returned to a country, a financial system and an institution profoundly altered by five years of conflict.
The post-war years brought a decisive transition. Paul Philippson, representing the third generation, had returned to the family bank after the war but left the institution in 1953. As Jean Degroof's role and ownership increased, the bank became Jules Philippson, Jean Degroof & Cie.
Jules remained associated with the institution he had served for more than half a century. Following his death in 1961, the bank became Jean Degroof & Cie.
Ninety years after Franz Philippson founded his banking house, the family name disappeared from the institution's title. The enterprise, however, continued.
In 1972, Alain Philippson joined Banque Degroof, returning a fourth generation of the family to the institution founded by his great-grandfather. He became managing partner in 1979 and participated in the transformation of the bank from a Belgian private bank into a broader financial institution.
Over the following decades, Banque Degroof expanded its private banking activities, participated in major Belgian IPOs and privatisations, made acquisitions and developed internationally. Alain's progression took place from within the institution rather than through inherited control.
In 1998, a management buyout enabled the Philippson family to become significant shareholders once again, restoring a direct ownership link with the bank after decades of diminished influence.
In 2015, Banque Degroof and Petercam combined to create Degroof Petercam, bringing together two of Belgium's most established independent financial institutions.
The merger marked another transformation in an institution whose identity had repeatedly evolved since 1871, from Banque Philippson to Banque Degroof and now Degroof Petercam. Alain Philippson, then Chairman, represented the fourth generation of a family whose relationship with the bank had already survived changes of ownership, name, geography and scale.
The institution had become considerably larger than the banking house Franz Philippson founded, but the family's connection to it had endured for almost a century and a half.
By the early 2020s, the family faced a question that previous generations had encountered in different forms: what should ownership mean? Degroof Petercam had become a large, highly regulated financial institution in which the family was an important but minority shareholder. Increasingly, the family concluded that ownership without the ability to act entrepreneurially no longer reflected the way it wanted to deploy capital.
The decision was made to support the sale of Degroof Petercam to Indosuez Wealth Management, part of Crédit Agricole Group. The transaction brought to a close more than 150 years of direct association with the institution that began as Banque Philippson.
It did not end the family's investment activity. It changed its form. Existing family investment structures were reorganised around PIC1871, returning the emphasis to direct ownership, long-term capital and entrepreneurial decision-making.
PIC1871 represents a new chapter rather than an attempt to recreate the past. Across six generations, the form of the family enterprise has repeatedly changed. A private banking house became a financial institution. The institution passed through wars, changes of ownership, new names, international expansion and ultimately a sale. Each generation inherited something different from the one before it.
The sixth generation inherits neither Banque Philippson nor Banque Degroof. It inherits a way of thinking about ownership. Capital should be accompanied by responsibility. Independence matters. Time horizons should be long. And ownership is most meaningful when it allows the owner to act.
More than 150 years after Franz Philippson established his bank in Brussels, PIC1871 carries those principles into a different kind of family enterprise.