Hippolyte Worms

Hypolite Worms, or Hippolyte Worms (26 May 1889 – 28 January 1962) was a French businessman who inherited an interest in Worms et Cie, a major operator in the coal trade and in merchant shipping. He expanded the firm into shipbuilding and merchant banking and founded Banque Worms. Family The grandfather of Hypolite Worms, also called Hypolite Worms (1801–77), was from a Jewish merchant family from Sarrelouis. He married Sephora Goudchaux, daughter of a banking family from Lorraine. In 1848, he started to import coal to Rouen and Dieppe from Cardiff and Newcastle, and by 1851, he was said to be the largest importer of English coal in France. He bought his first ships in 1855 and, in the 1860s, set up coaling stations at Port Said and Suez that would become an effective monopoly on the supply of coal to ships using the canal. After he died in 1877, Worms et Cie kept its leading position in the coal trade under various members of the Worms and Goudchaux families and ventured into the petroleum trade. Hypolite Worms was born on 26 May 1889, in Paris. His parents were Lucien Worms, son of the first Hypolite Worms, and Virginie Houcke. His mother was Christian, and he was baptised. He married Gladys Mary Lewis-Morgan, an Anglican. Their daughter married the son of the English ambassador to Japan. Her son, Nicolas Cleaves-Worms, became managing associate of MM Worms and Co., which remained independent after Banque Worms was nationalized in 1982.