Le Recueil Financier - Digital version by Institute for Financial Archaeology

Brussels used to be an important financial centre and attracted countless foreign companies, just as London does today. Brussels held a quasi monopoly on tramway and light railway companies, such as Tramways de Koursk, Tramways Napolitains, Tramways de Rosario, Tramways de Tientsin,… These companies were quoted on the big board on a daily basis.

In the now legendary year of 1929, more than 1.000 companies had been listed in Brussels. All types of shares and bonds combined, the big black board included more than 1.500 quote lines. One third of these companies were foreign (France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany,…)

Only one yearbook covered the world of finance and financiers during the 1893-1975 period: “LE RECUEIL FINANCIER: annuaire des valeurs cotées aux bourses de Belgique”. This yearbook has proven to be of inestimable value to those researching the history of the Belgian stock exchanges.

The Recueil Financier contains a wealth of information on stock exchange prices, corporate financial results and balance sheets. The directors of the companies listed get a separate mention, referenced with all their mandates in the listed companies.

Every year a report is published on all companies, highlighting the commercial activities during the course of the year and giving a detailed list of corporate actions (investments, dividends, spin-offs, take-overs, splits…).

Until now the Recueil Financier was only available in printed form, which made research very time consuming. Worse still, no complete series of the yearbooks had survived and only scattered copies could be found in libraries.

All 82 years, encompassing 240.000 pages in 221 volumes, have been digitised by IFA over the last 2 years! IFA owns the reproduction rights.


link to the RFI-page of IFA