Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China

This article is about the historic British bank, Chartered Bank, which later merged with historic South African Bank - Standard Bank. For the merged and currently existing British bank, see Standard Chartered Bank.

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (or simply The Chartered Bank) was a bank incorporated in London in 1853 by Scotsman James Wilson, under a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria.

Though lacking a truly strong domestic network in Britain, it was influential in the development of British colonial trade throughout Asia.

In 1969, the Chartered Bank combined forces with the Standard Bank, which did business throughout Africa and the merged enterprise was incorporated in London as Standard Chartered.

History

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was founded by James Wilson, following the grant of a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria in 1853.

It was incorporated in London and opened its first branches in 1858 in Calcutta, Bombay and Shanghai. It expanded its operation to Hong Kong and Singapore in 1859 and followed by Karachi in 1863. The bank was keen to capitalise on the huge expansion of trade between India and China and other British possessions in Asia, where handsome profits to be made were at stake from financing the movement of goods from Europe to the East and it competed with the two great British banks of that time - the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank and Mercantile Bank of India, London and China.

The Shanghai branch of Chartered bank began operation in August 1858. Initially, the bank's business dealt specifically with large volume discounting and re-discounting of opium and cotton bills. Although opium cultivation gradually increased in China, opium imports still increased from 50,087 picul in 1863 to 82,61 picul in 1888. Transactions in the opium trade generated substantial profits for Chartered bank. Later, the Chartered Bank also became one of the principal foreign banknote-issuing institutions in Shanghai.

In 1859, the bank 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 Malaya. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the extension of the telegraph to China in 1871, Chartered was well placed to expand and develop its business.

The bank's expansion continued to the 1900s, leading it to open branches across Asia. The bank's traditional business was in cotton from Bombay, indigo and tea from Calcutta, rice from Burma, sugar from Java, tobacco from Sumatra, hemp from Manila and silk from Yokohama.

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. The bank's office in Yokohama, Japan was destroyed by the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, which killed a number of its staff.

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.

The bank was greatly affected by the Second World War.

In 1957, the Chartered Bank acquired the Eastern Bank, giving it a network of branches in Aden, Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar and the UAE. It also bought the Ionian Bank's Cyprus Branches.

Chartered Bank merged with the Standard Bank in 1969, and the combined bank became the Standard Chartered Bank. That same year the Government of India nationalized Allahabad Bank.

See also

• Banknotes of the Hong Kong dollar
• Standard Chartered
• Mercantile Bank of India, London and China
• The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

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