Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (or simply The Chartered Bank) was a bank founded in 1851/1853 following the grant of a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria. It opened its first branches in 1858 in Calcutta and Bombay and soon after in Shanghai.
The following year, it opened a branch in Hong Kong and an agency in Singapore. In 1861, the Singapore agency was upgraded to a branch. In 1862, the bank was authorised to issue bank notes in Hong Kong, a privilege it continues to exercise to this day. Over the following decades, it printed bank notes in China and Malaysia. The bank's expansion continued through the 1860s to the 1900s, leading it to open branches across Asia. In the early 1900s, the bank opened offices in New York and Hamburg. When it established its New York branch in 1912, Chartered Bank became the first foreign bank to be issued a license to operate in New York.
In 1927 the bank acquired P&O Bank, which had offices in Colombo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canton. P&O Bank also owned Allahabad Bank. Chartered Bank merged in P&O Bank, but continued to run Allahabad Bank separately until the Government of India nationalized Allahabad in 1969
In 1957, the Chartered Bank acquired the Eastern Bank, giving it a network of branches in Aden, Bahrain, Beirut, Cyprus, Lebanon, Qatar and the UAE.
The bank was greatly affected by the two World Wars. The bank's office in Yokohama, Japan was destroyed by an earthquake in 1923 killing a number of its staff.
In 1957, the bank acquired the Eastern Bank which gave it a network of branches in Aden, Bahrain, Beirut, Cyprus, Lebanon, Qatar and UAE.
It merged with the Standard Bank of South Africa in 1969, and the combined bank became the Standard Chartered Bank.
References
- Feng, Bangyan; (1861). A Century of Hong Kong Financial Development. Joint Publishing Hong Kong. ISBN 962-04-2129-9.
- History of Standard Chartered Bank on its website
Categories
Defunct banks | Banks of Hong Kong | 1850s establishments | 1969 disestablishments | Companies of Hong Kong | Defunct companies of Hong Kong