In the early 1820s Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim founded in his own name a private banking establishment in Amsterdam, while his brother Jonathan Raphaël created a branch in Antwerp in 1827 before settling in Brussels in 1836. Having married the daughter of Frankfurt banker Hayum-Salomon Goldschmidt, Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim established the Bischoffsheim-Goldschmidt bank in Paris in 1846, then in London in 1860. In 1863 he merged it with the Banque de Crédit et de Dépôt des Pays-Bas, which he had founded in Amsterdam alongside other European financiers.
At the same time, in 1869 a group of bankers and investors including Adrien Delahante, Edmond Joubert and Henri Cernuschi founded the Banque de Paris, with its headquarters near the Opera at 3 rue d'Antin.
