Georges Aubert

Georges-Édouard Aubert (Châtillon, born 1 July 1869 – Casablanca, 19 March 1933. was a French industrialist and financier who served as a foreign trade advisor and was a significant investor in haute couture.

Parcours

Born to Félicie-Esther Pautex and Jacques-Claude Aubert, a merchant in Paris, Georges-Édouard Aubert earned a law degree and at the end of the 1890s specialized in international trade.

As an advisor and director for various large French export companies, he made numerous trips to the United States and to South Africa. In 1898, he began publishing essays with Flammarion, his main publisher. His writings proved to be clear and well-argued analyses of the weaknesses and delays of French foreign trade. He was quickly connected with the government, which tasked him with various diplomatic missions as a foreign trade advisor for France.

In 1904, he was a member of the jury for the St. Louis World's Fair. Now a recognized expert on international exchanges, he published American Finance in 1910, a work in which he precisely traces the origins of the great American financial fortunes and reviews the Panic of 1907. In 1912, he gave a series of lectures around the world on financial issues.

In 1914, Aubert was one of the promoters of a “French Bank of Foreign Trade,” which ultimately did not come to fruition. During World War I, he served as an honorary consul, still in charge of missions on international commercial matters.

During the 1920s, Aubert began investing a large part of his fortune in Parisian haute couture. He took on the administrative and financial direction in 1924 of the fashion house Germaine Patat, then of Paul Poiret (which he closed in 1929), Maison Agnès, Georges Dœuillet and Doucet (which he brought together into a single entity), and Drecoll & Beer. He was also the owner of the Paul Boulanger Distillery in Pantin.

From the 1910s, he was friends with couturier Georges Dœuillet: it was through Aubert that Benjamin Guggenheim was able to invest in the Dœuillet house.

In 1925, Aubert received the Legion of Honour.

Shortly before the 1929 crisis, he created the new companies Dœuillet-Doucet and Agnès-Drecoll and faced off against the Oustric bank, which, via the Holding Française (and Riccardo Gualino, founder of SNIA Viscosa), attempted to take control of the French haute couture houses.

The Oustric affair in November 1929 severely impacted his investments, though he continued to appeal to the financial markets between 1930 and 1932. Aubert died the following year. He is buried at Passy Cemetery (Paris).

Dœuillet-Doucet was liquidated in 1937 without a buyer, and Agnès-Drecoll, sold in 1937, disappeared in 1963.

Georges Aubert, whose motto was ad officium voluntas, owned a prestigious building at 33 Avenue Hoche, where he lived.

Écrits

• Transvaal. Commercial, industrial and financial situation of the South African Republic in 1897, P. Dupont, 1898.
• South Africa, letter-preface by Amédée Prince, Flammarion, 1898.
• What Explains the Inferiority of French Trade? How to Remedy It?, Flammarion, 1900.
• The Transvaal and England in South Africa, Flammarion, 1900 (expanded edition of 1898).
• The New Americas, social and economic notes: United States, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Guatemala, etc., Flammarion, 1901.
• American Finance, Flammarion, 1910 on Gallica, with his portrait.
• Financial Studies: 1° The American financial market; 2° Brazilian Credit in France and England; 3° Some financial reflections following a trip to Brazil and Argentina; 4° Land speculation and real estate investments in Buenos Aires and Argentina, by the Author, 1912.
• Franco-German Madness: a contemporary study. 1914, preface by Raphaël-Georges Lévy, Flammarion [1919].