There are not many recognised impossibilities in business, but everybody admits 'that you cannot found a new private bank.' No such has been founded in London, or, as far as I know, in the country, for many years.

The old ones merge or die, and so the number is lessened; but no new ones begin so as to increase that number again.
The truth is that the circumstances which originally favoured the establishment of private banks have now almost passed away.

The world has become so large and complicated that it is not easy to ascertain who is rich and who is poor.

No doubt there are some enormously wealthy men in England whose means everybody has heard of, and has no doubt of.

But these are not the men to incur the vast liabilities of private banking.