Société Générale de Belgique
[2] At its height in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Société Générale exercised significant control over large portions of the national economy of Belgium and the Belgian colonial empire.
After the Belgian Revolution in 1830, it was the new country's dominant financial institution and remained so even after the creation of the National Bank of Belgium in 1850.
As part of the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1814, the countries of Europe agreed to augment their armed forces from militias to standing armies.
Although Belgium had been offered independence by the Prussians, Britain's Lord Castlereagh vetoed it on the grounds that the country was too small to be economically viable, and the question then arose of who should govern it, the Austrians having washed their hands of it as a historical accident of the breakup of the Habsburg Empire.
Although William I of the Netherlands refused initially on the grounds of the added expense involved in maintaining his own army, Castlereagh persuaded him by asking him if he preferred to be Prince of Orange or King of the Netherlands, adding that from a practical point of view the Belgian Ducal Estates amounted to a third of the country.
[citation needed] William subsequently founded the Algemeene Nederlandsche Maatschappij in 1822 in part to administer these large estates, while proclaiming the goal of increasing the welfare of the country.
Upon contributing 28,108 hectares of forst land, the king was the single largest shareholder of the Algemeene Nederlandsche Maatschappij at its founding,[3]: 3 the rest being subscribed by public and charitable institutions, other companies, and individuals.
It also acted as fiscal agent of the royal government, for which it developed a network of branches throughout the Southern Netherlands (including Luxembourg and Diekirch).
Because the bank's operations were dominated by the profit-making interests of its private shareholders, it fell short of the aims the king had set for it in terms of fostering economic development.
Immediately after its creation in 1822, the company acquired for its head office the former Brussels branch (French: refuge) of Averbode Abbey, at 3, rue Montagne du Parc/Warandeberg, a neoclassical structure designed by Barnabé Guimard and built in 1779–1781, which had become known as the Hôtel Wellington following a sojourn by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in June 1815, just before the Battle of Waterloo.
