Q. How is your banking business limited?
A. We are allowed to receive deposits up to a maximum of 100,000,000 francs.
Q. Do you invest in securities other than mortgages?
A. We employ our deposit funds in discounting commercial bills on condition that they have two signatures and can be presented to the Bank of France; that is to say, they must not run over three months.
Q. You take mortgages on private estates?
A. Our mortgages may be on houses or on rural property.
Q. What is the precise relationship of the stockholders to the business of the company? Have they really a voice in the administration?
A. The two hundred largest stockholders meet once a year to ratify accounts, vote the dividend, and consider the questions docketed for the day of the meeting.
Q. What is the usual length of time for mortgages on real estate?
A. Our statutes allow us to loan for seventy-five years on ordinary rural or city property. In the case of summer resorts and certain other property liable to depreciate rapidly, for the sake of prudence we do not generally lend for more than thirty years; besides, the borrowers always have the right to repay at any time, and they often avail themselves of this right, so that the average length of our loans is much less—hardly exceeding fifteen or twenty years.