Kazuhiko Yago, one of the most ‘Europeanised’ Japanese scholars, benefited from a grant (Suntory Foundation) which helped him delve into the archives of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) (organised by Piet Clement) and of a few central banks. His book does not compete with Gianni Toniolo's overall history commissioned by the BIS (Central Bank Cooperation at the Bank for International Settlements, 1930-1973, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 600 pp.) or with the papers delivered by either Toniolo or Clement. Nevertheless, it makes a contribution to the construction of the history of the BIS and to that of the cooperation between central banks, in Europe and across the Atlantic, and its bibliography, collected in the endnotes, serves as a toolkit in its own right. In contrast with Toniolo's intent to ‘commemorate’ the BIS history through a wide-reaching book, Yago focuses on two main topics: first, its financial history and, second, far larger, going beyond the narrow title of the book, the reconstitution of the balance of power and of the inner life of the ‘institution’, through its meetings and committees. Yago succeeded in mobilising archives, mémoires and the press to help us gain access to the almost day-to-day field of expertise and decision-making at the BIS, either in Basel or in other places where managers, experts, ministers and central bankers meet. Beyond mere ‘financial history’, therefore, we have at our disposal the very life of a financial institution, an original one in comparison with business banking history, because it centres around an internationalised structure and modus operandi.

The first and expected topic to be covered is the cooperation between central banks. Yago relates and analyses very well the role of ‘venue’ played by the BIS from the start, as a way for central bankers and their experts to go beyond their agendas and to set up discussions and studies, as a way to ‘invent’ an actual community of minds and expertise, in parallel with the ministers of finance and the investment bankers - even if in 1929 J. P. Morgan & Co. still represented the US government at the talks for the foundation of the BIS. Yago gauges with subtlety the growing ‘interconnectedness’ favoured by the BIS as an institution, on several occasions, mainly during the 1931-6 crisis, World War II (with meetings of ‘neutral’ or ‘non-engaged’ experts), when a European system of convertibility had to be rebuilt in the 1950s, etc. The BIS also served as an informal ‘school’ for experts: Yago used his in-depth knowledge of French archives to ponder the participation and role of French experts in the Swiss institution (pp. 60ff.), with ‘heavy-weight bureaucrats’ profiting from their meetings by gaining a better understanding of how French policy could be complemented and fine-tuned.

A second point tackled by Yago concerns the ‘human resources’ of the BIS, that is its growing capital of competence thanks to its brilliant experts. Its general managers - predominantly French experts - could rely on a monetary and economic department (from September 1931) which gathered momentum to the point that its head, Per Jacobsson, became the BIS general manager and then in 1957 the head of the IMF. When recouping all the sections earmarked to them, we gain access to some kind of a prosopography of these European and transatlantic elites, like the American Milton Gilbert and Leon Fraser, or French Pierre Quesnay or Roger Aubouin. Reaping gains from their intensified networking, these experts played an active role as the ‘secretariat’ and something of a think-tank for international conferences and workshops to be held at the BIS. At each stage, Yago assesses the ‘ideological’ debates among its experts and those of central banks, about monetary equilibrium, neoliberalism etc. The post-war reconstruction of an international monetary system placed the BIS at the centre of controversy: it had to defend its very raison d'être before the Washington institutions (IMF and BIRD). But it achieved its ‘rehabilitation’ as a practical tool for European states facing crises of liquidity and a ‘machine’ for delivering short-term credits and (from the end of the 1950s) swapped operations with them, whilst the Bretton-Woods institutions specialised in longer terms. Even if such facts about the evolution of the BIS are already well known through numerous studies, Yago has examined the archives to glean details of the day-to-day of process of building these new missions and skills in 1947–9 and in the 1950s.

Was the BIS truly a ‘bank’? Yago does not actually grapple with this issue, but the answer is scattered throughout his book; it was certainly equipped with a Banking Department (the first manager was Marcel von Zeeland). Since its inception, the BIS had to manage flows of cash paid through the Reparations system of the Young plan, stocks of currencies, and assumed therefore a double function, that of manager of means of payment and that of assets manager, as it had to fix the amounts of capital paid-up by the 23 countries involved – till the resignation of Japan after World War II – and the reserves fuelled by profits, as a leverage for its current operations, and moreover to value part of the current deposits from the central banks. This explains its growing FOREX expertise, its experience in circulating cash and trading in Treasury bills, gold, etc., either in Switzerland itself or abroad. Yago discusses the strategic turning point fostered by the stop of the Reparations because of the moratorium of 1931–3. Diversification was at stake, and the BIS's portfolio was steadily extended. The book reminds us of a crucial issue: the management of gold ingots, whose source had been Nazi confiscations and spoliations of Jewish assets, laundered in ‘neutral’ Switzerland and later on partly traced to the BIS coffers. Yago delineated how the banking skills of the BIS were enriched after the re-emergence of the City, for the gold market and moreover through the new euromarkets; even if this is now well understood, it is supplemented by this story of the role of BIS there; and the BIS played a key role in helping the British authorities during the sterling crisis in 1960-6 (pp. 64-168). Happily, these examples of reorientation towards banking balanced the loss of the Reparations mission in 1953 and the loss of the linked deposits in 1964.

The high quality of this book is complemented by sections which, in each chapter, provide statistics about the balance sheet, the operations and the profits of the BIS. Quantitative financial history might thus have been practised. One single piece of criticism lies with what Professor Yago calls a ‘conclusion’: the lightness of this ultimate text is disappointing, as some broader comparison of the BIS with other international institutions, discussions about the Swiss background of its activities, meditations about ‘internationalised experts’ could have covered two or three dozen pages, instead of these meagre conclusive remarks.