theory

I guess I'll offer some metatexual/paratexual (?) commentary:

From the prefaces:

This pamphlet was written with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, specifically economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in an allegorical language—in that accursed Aesopian language—to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up the pen to write a “legal” work.

It is painful, in these days of liberty, to re-read the passages of the pamphlet which have been distorted, cramped, compressed in an iron vice on account of the censor. That the period of imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution; that social-chauvinism (socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds) is the utter betrayal of socialism, complete desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie; that this split in the working-class movement is bound up with the objective conditions of imperialism, etc.—on these matters I had to speak in a “slavish” tongue, and I must refer the reader who is interested in the subject to the articles I wrote abroad in 1914-17, a new edition of which is soon to appear. In order to show the reader, in a guise acceptable to the censors, how shamelessly untruthful the capitalists and the social-chauvinists who have deserted to their side (and whom Kautsky opposes so inconsistently) are on the question of annexations; in order to show how shamelessly they screen the annexations of their capitalists, I was forced to quote as an example—Japan! The careful reader will easily substitute Russia for Japan, and Finland, Poland, Courland, the Ukraine, Khiva, Bokhara, Estonia or other regions peopled by non-Great Russians, for Korea.

I trust that this pamphlet will help the reader to understand the fundamental economic question, that of the economic essence of imperialism, for unless this is studied, it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.

As was indicated in the preface to the Russian edition, this pamphlet was written in 1916, with an eye to the tsarist censorship. I am unable to revise the whole text at the present time, nor, perhaps, would this be advisable, since the main purpose of the book was, and remains, to present, on the basis of the summarised returns of irrefutable bourgeois statistics, and the admissions of bourgeois scholars of all countries, a composite picture of the world capitalist system in its international relationships at the beginning of the twentieth century—on the eve of the first world imperialist war.

Far from some holy text, Lenin himself felt the final work was compromised due to having to write the work in such a way that it would sneak past Tsarist censors. We ought to read the work with a much more critical eye because there's the literal text and there's what Lenin is really trying to say between the lines that the Tsarist censors won't catch. This also shows how so many people engage in book-worship. Yes, this text is absolutely foundational in understanding imperialism, but it does no good to put this text on a pedestal when even the author himself admits that he can't read it without cringing slightly at certain parts. This is why the prefaces along with the companion piece "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism" are also important to read as well.

I'll go over some of the banking institutions Lenin mentioned:

In France, three very big banks, Crédit Lyonnais, the Comptoir National and the Société Générale extended their operations and their network of branches in the following manner.

Those three French banks more or less existed until 1966 when Comptoir National merged with another bank to form Banque Nationale de Paris. Crédit Lyonnais, BNP, and Société Générale then existed until 2000 when BNP merged with another bank to form BNP Paribas. Around 2002, Crédit Lyonnais almost got absorbed by BNP Paribas but in the end got taken over by another French bank called Crédit Agricole, which Wikipedia calls "the second largest bank in France, after BNP Paribas, as well as the third largest in Europe and tenth largest in the world."

We have just mentioned the 300 million marks capital of the Disconto-Gesellschaft of Berlin. This increase of the capital of the bank was one of the incidents in the struggle for hegemony between two of the biggest Berlin banks-the Deutsche Bank and the Disconto. In 1870, the first was still a novice and had a capital of only 15 million marks, while the second had a capital of 30 million marks. In 1908, the first had a capital of 200 million, while the second had 170 million. In 1914, the first increased its capital to 250 million and the second, by merging with another first-class big bank, the Schaaffhausenscher Bankverein, increased its capital to 300 million. And, of course, this struggle for hegemony went hand in hand with the more and more frequent conclusion of “agreements” of an increasingly durable character between the two banks. The following are the conclusions that this development forces upon banking specialists who regard economic questions from a standpoint which does not in the least exceed the bounds of the most moderate and cautious bourgeois reformism

The final conclusion of the increasingly durable character was met when Deutsches Bank merged with Disconto-Gesellschaft to form Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft in 1929. They changed their name back to Deutsche Bank in 1937, presumably because calling yourself "German Bank" plays well in Nazi Germany, which they aggressively collaborated with, including taking over Austria's largest bank after the Anschluss.

And now that I think about it, it's somewhat curious that Lenin would focus more on German banks when the center of capital during the late 19th/early 20th century wasn't in Berlin, but London (or I guess Washington DC if you're one of those people who argues that the center of capital had already moved to the US by the early 20th century). To really understand how 19th century finance capital operates, why would you focus on German banks instead of British banks? Could it be that because Russia was allied with the UK during WWI against Germany, those Tsarist censors were more tolerant of someone shitting on Russia's enemies instead of Russia's allies?