Haim Aharon Valero (1845–1923) was a banker, entrepreneur and a prominent figure in the Jewish community of 19th century Jerusalem. Under his direction, the Valero Bank, founded in 1848 by his father Jacob, acted as catalyst in the development of the Jewish community under Ottoman rule. The bank's capital and financial services were employed in the acquisition of land and building, helping transform Jerusalem and nearby townships from stagnation and poverty towards the modernization of the 20th century.
Biography
Haim Aharon Valero was born in Jerusalem in 1845. He benefitted from a broader education, including five languages: French, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew and Ladino (the language spoken by the Jews of Spain). At the age of fifteen he started working as clerk in the bank run by his father and by 1875 became the manager of the Jerusalem branch. By this time the bank had no other partners. In 1880, after the death of his older brother Joseph, he became director of the bank.
Haim Aharon's father, Jacob Valero (1813–1874), was of Spanish-Jewish origins (Sephardic), whose ancestors were forced out of Spain by the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century. His family migrated to the Ottoman Empire and Jacob was born in Istanbul. He received a traditional Jewish education and as a young man (in the early 1830s) migrated to Ottoman Syria and settled in Jerusalem.
Jacob Valero married Esther Aziza Levi and had three children. Initially he worked as a butcher, but after a while switched to money changing, which went from strength to strength. In collaboration with Haim Amzalak (another Sephardic Jew), Gavriel (some say Yehuda) Papu and Jacob (Giacomo) Pascal (an Armenian in the employ of the Austrian consulate - a ‘silent’ partner), he founded in 1848 the first bank in Palestine, named Jacob Valero & Co. The main branch was located in the Old City close to the Jaffa Gate, in a small two room flat. With the expansion of its operations, a branch was opened in the port of Jaffa, directed by his eldest son Joseph (1837–1879) and the bank also had representation (possibly another branch) in Damascus.
Valero married Simha Papu and had seven children with her. After she died at the age of 38, he married his niece, Miriam Valero, and had two more children. He died in 1923 and was buried at the Mount of Olives cemetery.
Valero Bank
The early operations of the bank consisted of financial services for the local community: deposits, loans, transfers. The bank was the main conduit for the transactions of the Pekidim and Amarkalim of the Holy Land organisation (literally: "clerks and agents" in Hebrew), a Dutch-Jewish society based in Amsterdam and dedicated to the distribution of charity funds collected in Europe for the Old Yishuv (Halukkah). The bank's clientele expanded along with its services, to include consulates, churches, other religious institutions and charities. It acted as agent for the Ottoman administration as well as Austrian, German and Russian governments. It also had the status of correspondent with the Rothschilds of Paris, London and Vienna (the Österreichische Credit-Anstalt), the Samuel Montagu & Co. bankers of London and Banque Russe pour le Commerce Étranger in Paris. When Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary visited Jerusalem in November 1869 (en route to the opening of the Suez Canal), the bank handled the transfer of funds required to cover the costs of the trip. Jacob Valero was subsequently awarded the Order of the Iron Crown. In his ‘Jerusalem Memory Book’ (1913), Nahum Dov Freiman assessed the resources of the Valero Bank at 3,000,000 francs (£120,000). The bank made a significant contribution to the economic development of the city and played a significant wider role in the transfer of funds from Europe to a wide range of Jewish organizations.
The strategy of the Czar of Russia to expand the influence of the Russian Empire led to a steady increase in the number of Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem in the second half of the 19th century. The Czar, who saw himself as defender of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, sought a foothold in the city. In October 1860, the Russian government acquired a large plot and work started on what was then the largest construction project in Jerusalem. The walled Russian Compound, as it is known until this day, comprised a church, hospital, the residence of the Russian consul and hostels for pilgrims. The bank helped realize the project through the transfer of funds and other banking services and in recognition of this, in 1888 the Czar honoured Haim Aharon Valero with the Order of St. Anna.