In the last quarter of 1906, Madras (now Chennai) was hit by the worst financial crisis the city was ever to suffer.[2] Of the three best-known British commercial names in 19th century Madras, one crashed; a second had to be resurrected by a distress sale; and the third had to be bailed out by a benevolent benefactor. Arbuthnot & Co, which failed, was considered the soundest of the three. Parry's (now EID Parry), may have been the earliest of them and Binny & Co.'s founders may have had the oldest associations with Madras, but it was Arbuthnot, established in 1810, that was the city's strongest commercial organisation in the 19th Century. A key figure in the bankruptcy case for Arbuthnot's was the Madras lawyer, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer who founded the Indian bank which was an offshoot of nationalistic fervour and the Swadeshi movement, when the then British Arbuthnot Bank collapsed and the Indian Bank emerged. Mr V. Krishnaswamy Iyer solicited the support of the Nagarathar Chettiars…
In 1937, Thiru.M. Ct. M. Chidambaram Chettyar established the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) to encourage overseas banking and foreign exchange operations. IOB started up simultaneously at three branches, one each in Karaikudi, Madras, and Rangoon (Yangon). It quickly opened a branch in Penang, Kuala Lumpur (1937 or 1938), and another in Singapore (1937 or 1941). The bank served the Nattukottai Chettiars, who were a mercantile class that at the time had spread from Chettinad in Tamil Nadu state to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar), Malaya, Singapore, Java, Sumatra, and Saigon. As a result, from the beginning IOB specialised in foreign exchange and overseas banking.
Today, Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) is a major public sector bank based in Chennai (Madras), with about 3700 domestic branches, including 1150 branches in Tamil Nadu, 3 extension counters, and eight branches and offices overseas as of 30 September 2014. Indian Overseas Bank has an ISO certified in-house Information Technology…
The Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) was established in 1964 under an Act of Parliament as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India. In 1976, the ownership of IDBI was transferred to the Government of India and it was made the principal financial institution for coordinating the activities of institutions engaged in financing, promoting and developing industry in India. IDBI provided financial assistance, both in rupee and foreign currencies, for green-field projects as also for expansion, modernization and diversification purposes. In the wake of financial sector reforms unveiled by the government since 1992, IDBI also provided indirect financial assistance by way of refinancing of loans extended by State-level financial institutions and banks and by way of re-discounting of bills of exchange arising out of sale of indigenous machinery on deferred payment terms.
Today, IDBI Bank is an Indian government-owned financial service company, formerly known as…
On 24 June 1908, Bhai Vir Singh, Sir Sunder Singh Majitha, and Sardar Tarlochan Singh established Punjab & Sind Bank. On 15 April 1980 Punjab & Sind Bank was among six banks that the Government of India nationalised in the second wave of nationalisations. (The first wave had been in 1969 when the government nationalised the top 14 banks.) In the 1960s Punjab & Sind Bank established a branch in London. In 1991 Bank of Baroda acquired Punjab & Sind Bank's London branch at the behest of the Reserve Bank of India following Punjab & Sind's involvement in the Sethia fraud in 1987.
Today, Punjab & Sind Bank is a government-owned bank (79.62%), with headquarters in New Delhi. Of its 1466 branches spread throughout India, 623 branches are in Punjab state. Its net profit is Rs. 121.35 crores and net NPA is 3.55% for the year ending 2014-15. The bank's operating profit for the year ending 2014-15 is Rs. 775.45 crores. Total business of the bank was Rs. 1,51,511 crores for the year ending…
Punjab National Bank was registered on 19 May 1894 under the Indian Companies Act, with its office in Anarkali Bazaar, Lahore present day Pakistan. The founding board was drawn from different parts of India professing different faiths and a varied back-ground with, however, the common objective of providing country with a truly national bank which would further the economic interest of the country. PNB's founders included several leaders of the Swadeshi movement such as Dyal Singh Majithia and Lala Harkishan Lal, Lala Lalchand, Shri Kali Prosanna Roy, Shri E.C. Jessawala, Shri Prabhu Dayal, Bakshi Jaishi Ram, and Lala Dholan Dass. Lala Lajpat Rai was actively associated with the management of the Bank in its early years. The board first met on 23 May 1894. The bank opened for business on 12 April 1895 in Lahore.
PNB has the distinction of being the first Indian bank to have been started solely with Indian capital that has survived to the present. PNB has had the privilege of…
The roots of the State Bank of India lie in the first decade of the 19th century, when the Bank of Calcutta, later renamed the Bank of Bengal, was established on 2 June 1806. The Bank of Bengal was one of three Presidency banks, the other two being the Bank of Bombay (incorporated on 15 April 1840) and the Bank of Madras (incorporated on 1 July 1843). All three Presidency banks were incorporated as joint stock companies and were the result of royal charters. These three banks received the exclusive right to issue paper currency till 1861 when, with the Paper Currency Act, the right was taken over by the Government of India. The Presidency banks amalgamated on 27 January 1921, and the re-organised banking entity took as its name Imperial Bank of India. The Imperial Bank of India remained a joint stock company but without Government participation.
Pursuant to the provisions of the State Bank of India Act of 1955, the Reserve Bank of India, which is India's central bank, acquired a…
The business with a capital of 8000 rupees. T M A Pai, Upendra Pai and Vaman Kudva strove together to set up the bank. The first branch of the bank started its operations in 1925 at Udupi, in Dakshin Kannada district in Karnataka state. By 1937, it had secured its membership as a clearing house at Mumbai. The primary objective of the business was to extend the financial assistance to local weavers. Initially, the bank collected as low as two annas from the door steps of the depositors daily through its agents. This type of system wherein the agents of the bank come doorsteps to collect deposit is still prevailing in India and is referred to as the Pigmy Deposit Scheme. As time progressed, twenty banks merged with the Canara Industrial and Banking Syndicate Limited including the Maharashtra Apex Bank Limited and Southern India Apex Bank Limited. The name of the bank was changed to Syndicate Bank Limited in 1964 and the head office of the bank was shifted to Manipal. The bank expanded…
Ghanshyam Das Birla, an eminent Indian industrialist, during the Quit India movement of 1942, conceived the idea of organizing a commercial bank with Indian capital and management, and the United Commercial Bank Limited was incorporated to give shape to that idea. The bank was started with Kolkata as its head office with an issued capital of ₹2 crores and a paid-up capital of ₹1 crore. Birla was its chairman and the Board of Directors included eminent personalities of India drawn from many fields. The bank opened 14 branches simultaneously across India.
After World War II, United Commercial Bank opened several overseas branches. The first, in 1947, was in Rangoon. Branches in Singapore (1951), Hong Kong (March 1952), London (1953), and Malaysia followed. In 1963 the Burmese Government nationalized United Commercial Bank's three branches there, which became People's Bank No. 6. On 15 September 1967, Jalpaiguri Banking and Trading Corporation (JBTC) which had been established in…