The Banking and Insurance History Working Group met on 1 December at Ergo Group AG in Düsseldorf on the topic of "Corporate risks - researching, managing and controlling them?" After a brief welcome and introduction by working group chairwoman FRIEDERIKE SATTLER, risk management expert ANDREAS TRUSOW from Ergo AG spoke about current trends in risk management at Ergo, in particular about dealing with the increasing number of crises and the role of historical data in risk analysis.

DEREK HATTEMER then presented a sub-topic of his dissertation project. He presented on the emergence of a mass market for private life insurance at the end of the Weimar Republic and in the early "Third Reich" and on the development of the idea of insurance during this period between personal responsibility, savings community and national community. The lecture by BORIS GEHLEN was dedicated to a case study. He explained the role that risk management played in the development of Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., founded by August Thyssen, from a corporate bank to a global financial investor. Finally, NICOLAS HAFNER and FILIP BATSELÉ focussed in their presentations on the protection of foreign investments by interest groups, in particular by the Association for the Promotion of Foreign Investment Protection (APPI). While Hafner looked at the handling of political risks in the course of decolonisation, Batselé focused on the Federal Republic's efforts to recover German property confiscated by the USA after the Second World War and on attempts to prevent a renewed loss of German foreign investments in the future.