1. Albert Oustric was a French entrepreneur and banker.
30 Facts About Albert Oustric
1. 2.
Albert Oustric was the son of a cafe proprietor, and held various jobs before managing to raise capital for a hydroelectric power generation company.
3.
Albert Oustric founded a small bank in 1919 and specialized in turning around enterprises that were in financial difficulty through debt consolidation and the sale of shares at inflated prices.
4.
Albert Oustric invested in a wide range of industries from mining to leather goods and retail banking.
5.
Albert Oustric's group was bankrupted by the economic crisis that started in 1929, and many small depositors were ruined.
6.
Albert Oustric was born on 2 September 1887 in Carcassonne, Aude.
7.
Albert Oustric's father ran a cafe in Carcassonne, then became manager of a wine and spirits store in Toulouse.
8.
Albert Oustric became clerk to an advocate, then a sales representative of the Cusenier distilled beverage firm in the Aude.
9.
Albert Oustric was released from the factory to exploit a legacy of his father, the rights to a waterfall in the Gripp valley of the Hautes-Pyrenees, by building a hydropower plant.
10.
Albert Oustric floated the Electro-Metal company to produce ferro-silicon in Haute-Garonne.
11.
Albert Oustric sold shares in an artificial silk company, la Borswich francaise, in 1923.
12.
In 1926 Albert Oustric invested in a silver mine in Bolivia, the Huanchaca.
13.
Albert Oustric used announcements of false discoveries to make the share prices rise by ten times their original value, then let them fall, then pushed them up again.
14.
Albert Oustric profited from the protectionist isolation of the French stock exchange, cut off from international finance and from other exchanges.
15.
Albert Oustric was controlled by the Italian financier Riccardo Gualino, who was assisted by Benito Mussolini and the Bank of Italy, and had become the second-largest rayon manufacturer in the world.
16.
On 26 March 1926 Gaston Vidal, a former deputy and secretary of state and now a director of the Albert Oustric bank, asked on behalf of the bank for authorization to list 500,000 shares of Snia Viscosa in France.
17.
Albert Oustric pressed the ministry, which remained cautious and wanted assurances that there would be an agreement between the French and Italian textile industries.
18.
Albert Oustric said he would be willing to help obtain an agreement, and on that basis Peret gave the authorization.
19.
Albert Oustric moved from arbitrage to ownership of various risky enterprises which he turned around through debt consolidation and partial sale of shares.
20.
Albert Oustric became involved in companies ranging from oil production to leather goods.
21.
Albert Oustric then acquired Sarlino in Reims, and Athos, a sewing machine company.
22.
Albert Oustric used funds from the Banque Adam to buy shares in his other companies so as to keep their prices from falling.
23.
The Albert Oustric group failed with debts of 125 million on 5 November 1930.
24.
Banque Adam, a Calais-based consumer bank majority owned by Albert Oustric, was among the subsidiaries that failed.
25.
The newspapers claimed that Albert Oustric had drained cash from the Banque Adam taking the money of depositors.
26.
Albert Oustric had received large fees but had provided no legal services.
27.
The inquiry showed that the Bank of France had been involved in Albert Oustric's speculations, indicating extreme naivety of the central bank staff.
28.
In January 1932 Albert Oustric was found guilty of fraud, embezzlement and engaging in financial irregularities.
29.
Albert Oustric was released on medical grounds and took a job as an employee of his former bank, which had reopened, at 3,000 francs a month.
30.
Albert Oustric died on 16 April 1971 in Toulouse aged 83.