ANZ is one of the leading Australian banks in the Asia-Pacific region. It has been aggressive in its expansion into the emerging markets of China, Vietnam and Indonesia. ANZ is also a leading bank in New Zealand as well as several Pacific Island Nation where it competes in many markets with fellow Australian bank Westpac. ANZ's arm in New Zealand is operated through a subsidiary company, ANZ National Bank, from 2003 to 2012, when it changed to ANZ Bank New Zealand upon merging the ANZ and National Bank brands. In March 2005, it formed a strategic alliance with Vietnam's Sacombank involving an acquisition of 10% of Sacombank’s share capital. As part of the strategic alliance, ANZ will provide technical assistance in the areas of risk management and retail and small business banking. ANZ has followed a similar strategy in China, where it acquired a 20% share in Tianjin City Commercial Bank in July 2006. It also negotiated a similar deal with Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank. In August…
Established in Sydney in 1817, the Bank of New South Wales (BNSW) was the first bank in Australia. Edward Smith Hall was its first cashier and secretary. During the 19th and early 20th century, the Bank opened branches first throughout Australia and Oceania, at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) in 1850, then in Victoria (1851), New Zealand (1861), South Australia (1877), Western Australia (1883), Fiji (1901), Papua New Guinea (1910) and Tasmania (1910). In 1982, BNSW merged with the Commercial Bank of Australia and changed their name to Westpac Banking Corporation. WBC was framed with the mission to become a significant Western-Pacific bank from which the Westpac portmanteau is derived. The brand name incorporated the "W" which had been the logo of the Bank of New South Wales (popularly known as "the Wales"). Today, Westpac Banking Corporation, more commonly known as Westpac, is an Australian bank and financial-services provider headquartered in Westpac Place, Sydney. It is one of Australia's…
The government of Mauritius established State Bank of Mauritius in 1973 under the name State Commercial Bank. In 1994, SBM opened its first overseas branch in Mumbai, India. In 1995, the bank was listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius. Then in 1997 the South African bank Nedcor acquired 20.1% of SBM’s voting equity. That same year SBM opened its second branch in India in Chennai, and the next year one in Hyderabad, India. Banque SBM Madagascar, a fully owned subsidiary of SBM, started banking operations in Madagascar in January 1998. The company operates from Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. The next year, SBM and Nedcor established SBM Nedcor International (SNI) as a 50/50 joint venture to engage in offshore banking, and SNI started operations in 2000. In order to avoid any conflict of interest with SBI International, Mauritius (formerly State Bank International), another joint venture offshore company between SBM and State Bank of India, SBM disinvested its 49 percent…
Sonali Bank was established in 1972 under the Bangladesh Banks (Nationalisation) Order, through the amalgamation and nationalization of the branches of National Bank of Pakistan, Bank of Bahawalpur and Premier Bank branches located in East Pakistan until the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. When it was established, Sonali Bank had a paid up capital of 30 million taka. In 2001, its authorized and paid up capital were Tk 10 billion and Tk 3.272 billion respectively. Presently, its authorised and paid up capital is Tk 10 billion and Tk 9 billion respectively The bank's reserve funds were Tk 60 million in 1979 and Tk 2.050 billion on 30 June 2000. In 2013, $250,000 was stolen from the bank by Cyber criminals using the Swift International payments network. In 2016 the Bank signed an Memorandum of Understanding with PayPal.
Sonali Bank has a total of 1207 branches. Out of them, 343 are located in urban areas, 862 in rural areas, and 2 are located overseas. It also operates the Sonali…
Crédit Agricole can trace its history back to the end of the 19th Century, and specifically to the Act of 1884 establishing the freedom of professional association, which authorised, among other things, the creation of farm unions and the foundation of local mutual banks. Société de Crédit Agricole was created on 23 February 1885 at Salins-les-Bains in the district of Poligny in the Jura region. It was the first of its kind in France. Drawing on this experience and in an effort to promote lending to small family farms, the Act of 5 November 1894, which had the support of Minister for Agriculture Jules Méline, paved the way for the creation of Crédit Agricole’s Local Banks. The first Local Banks were set up by local elites, including agronomists, teachers and property owners, with farmers playing a minority role. In the early years, business was made up exclusively of short-term loans provided as advances on harvests, enabling farmers to live more comfortably. Medium-term and long-term…
Established on 16 July 1968 by the Government of Singapore to take over the industrial financing activities from the Economic Development Board, the bank's main purpose was to provide loans and financial aid to the manufacturing and processing industries and to help establish and upgrade existing industries in Singapore. In 1960, the Singapore government invited a United Nations (UN) industrial survey mission to assess the economical situation in Singapore and to come up with an industrialization program for the city. The proposal included setting up a development bank, together with an economic body to attract foreign investments and provide financing and managing the industrial estates. The bank was incorporated in July 1968 and began operations in September of the same year.
Presently, DBS Bank is a multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Marina Bay, Singapore. The company was known as The Development Bank of Singapore Limited, before the present…
The bank was incorporated by the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia on March 30, 1832, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with William Lawson (1772–1848) serving as the first president. ScotiaBank was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1832 under the name of The Bank of Nova Scotia. The bank intended to facilitate the trans-Atlantic trade of the time. Later, in 1883, The Bank of Nova Scotia acquired the Union Bank of Prince Edward Island, although most of the bank's expansion efforts in the century took the form of branch openings.
The bank launched its branch banking system by opening in Windsor, Nova Scotia. The expansion was limited to the Maritimes until 1882, when the bank moved west by opening a branch in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Manitoba branch later closed but the bank continued to expand into the American Midwest. This included opening a branch in Minneapolis in 1885 which later transferred to Chicago in 1892. Following the collapse of the Commercial Bank of Newfoundland and Union…
Mitsubishi Bank was founded in 1880 by a former samurai, Iwasaki Yatarō, and was a core member of the Mitsubishi Group of companies. It merged with The Bank of Tokyo in 1996 to form The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd., which at that point was the world's largest bank in terms of total assets. In 1998, upon merger of the then second and third largest Swiss banks, Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation, the newly created UBS AG became the second largest in the world at the time, behind only the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. The Bank of Tokyo had historically focused on foreign exchange business since its foundation as the Yokohama Specie Bank in 1880, while Mitsubishi had had a stronger focus on domestic corporate and retail banking. Both banks were relatively healthy in the wake of the Japanese asset price bubble. Until the Tokyo-Mitsubishi merger took place in 1996, Sanwa Bank, which was based in Osaka and was the anchor of the Sanwa Group keiretsu, had been considered the…
The bank came into being on 14 March 1966 following the merger of two government-owned banks, Kaset Bank and Monton Bank. The merged banks were then named "Krung Thai Bank Limited", bearing its logo as an image of the Vayupaksa bird, which is also used by the Ministry of Finance. KTB's head office was originally located on Yawaraj Road. On 2 August 1989, KrungThai Bank was the first state enterprise to list its shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). Its major shareholder is the Ministry of Finance through a shareholding of 6,184 billion shares by the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF), accounting for 55.31 percent of total shares. In addition to commercial banking activities, KrungThai Bank has served as a government channel for financial services in support of governmental initiatives. It does this by lending to businesses of certain types, such as One Tambon One Product(OTOP) loans, ICT computer loans, and educational loans. Moreover, the bank is used by most…
HSBC Bank Oman S.A.O.G has operated in the Sultanate since 1948. It provides a wide range of banking services for both corporate and individual customers. In recent years HSBC Oman has expanded to over 90 branches and in addition has a full-service trading operation, private banking operation, and a custodial service for the Muscat Securities Market. In Oman, the HSBC Group is represented by HSBC Bank Oman S.A.O.G. In June 2012, HSBC Bank Middle East´s Oman operations merged with Oman International Bank (OIB), an Omani bank with a rich heritage in the Sultanate which was a public listed joint stock company listed on Muscat Securities Market (MSM) and was renamed as HSBC Bank Oman S.A.O.G (HBON). HSBC has been present in Oman since 1948 and for two decades was the only bank operating in the country. In 1970, it assisted in the first issue of the Omani currency. Over the years, the bank has delivered a number of “firsts” for Oman, including the first to launch ATMs, provide international…