[1] It provided asset management solutions for wealthy individual clients and institutional investors.

The bank was founded in 1789 in the city of Bonn by seventeen-year-old Salomon Oppenheim Jr. as a commissions and exchange house.

In 1798, the business moved to Cologne, then the most important banking location in Germany, settling in a palatial building on Grosse Budengasse 8.

[4] In 1828, Salomon Oppenheim Jr. died, and his wife Therese took over the direction of the bank along with their two sons, Simon and Abraham.

Through the marriage in 1834 of Abraham Oppenheim to Charlotte Beyfus [de], daughter of Siegmund Leopold Beyfus [de] (1786–1845) and Babette Rothschild (1784–1869), the family became closely related to the prominent Rothschild banking family in matters both personal and business-related.

In 1868, Abraham Oppenheim was raised to the rank of a Prussian Freiherr and belonged to the inner-circle of King Wilhelm I.

The first private German horse stud farm, Schlenderhan, which was founded by Eduard von Oppenheim in 1869, was transferred to the SS in 1942.

At the end of 2003, the bank employed 1,500 people in twenty locations, had nearly US$127 billion in asset management and profits totaling €61 million a year.

Alfred had partnered it with real estate developer Josef Esch [de], who subsequently played a major and sometimes controversial role in the bank's business activities.