A BANK SUSPENSION.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 51, 10 February 1911, Page 11

A BANK SUSPENSION.

NEW YORK FINANCIER’S CAREER.

AN EXPONENT OF FRENZIED

FINANCE.

The affairs of the Northern Bank of New York and its nine city branches, with deposits of over £1,500 ,000, engaged universal attention in America on December 28th because the financial methods of Mr. Joseph Robin, the dominant factor in the situation, eclipse in their audacity the' somewhat similar' methods pursued by Mr. Morse, the former Ice King, and other exponents of “ frenzied finance.” Mr. Robin was rushed off to a sanitorium as a paranoiac just before the explosion, which has reduced thousands of poor depositors to the verge of despair. The depositors themselves maintain that Mr. Robin simulated lunacy to escape action by the Public Prosecutor, and to-day the doctor who received the defaulting ~ banker into a sanatorium admits that he was imposed upon when admitting Mr. Robin under a recent Court commitment, and he declares that Mr. Robin is no longer with him as a and is either presumably at home or fleeing to Canada. Mr. Robin’s method was to avail himself in his financial transactions of a chain of financial institutions, in which he had a voice, and by which he could, by various processes of transfer of securities, secure a statement of affairs calculated to mislead. He was a railroad builder, banker and insurance company promotor, and many prominent men were associated with him. He is only 35 years old, was born in Russia, and claimed to be related to Russian Royalty. He arrived here thirty years ago as a

poor immigrant boy, and for some time worked as a bootblack. His proper name is Robinovitch, which he abbreviated eight years ago to Robin. He was associated with the Heinzes before the panic. of 1907, which he managed to survive* but at that time apparently he did not figure in the daring projects of underwriting and promoting since undertaking by him in New York. Mr. Robin looked more like _ a Frenchman than a Russians and it was understood among all except his intimate associates that he was of French extraction. He attended a night school while earning his bread as a bootblack, and at the age of 20 was a reporter employed by a local newspaper. Before 1896 he was deputy Commissioner, representing the Transvaal Government, and a year later first appeared in banking as a promotor of a banking association designed to further thrift amongst small wage earners. In recent years he has been interested, often as the chief promotor, in a score of financial institutions, and, through representatives, in a dozen other concerns, including several traction companies. His newspaper training improved his natural gift for simple, terse, and graphic exposition, which he employed apparently to great advantage in framing prospectuses and other allur-

ing literature. According to a statement, it is hoped that the depositors in the Northern Bank will ultimately collect their money, and that the stockholders of the various Robin concerns will alone suffer by Mr. Robin’s manipulations. The State Examiners, however, will not commit themselves because their inquiry is not yet complete. “If Mr. Robin is insane,’’ said Bank Superintendent “his brand of insanity would be a remarkably good investment for some financial institutions. He was able to go on juggling with the bank up to last week. When all the negotiations with other banks failed and he learned that he would be taken to the District Attorney’s office, his friends spirited. him away."