Grindlays Bank

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The Grindlays Bank was a major British overseas bank established in 1828. It operated mainly in British colonies, especially British India. After decolonization, it was a major foreign bank in India, Pakistan and other West Asian countries. After being acquired by ANZ Bank in 1984, and renamed ANZ Grindlays Bank in 1989, it was for a while the largest foreign bank operating in India, with 56 branches in that country.^[1] It was acquired by and merged with the Standard Chartered Bank in 2000, after which the name fell out of use.

[edit] Early history

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Robert Melville Grindlay established a firm, Leslie & Grindlay, in London in 1828, to arrange passage to and from India for customers and their baggage. In time, the firm added private banking activities to its menu of services. Changes in partners caused the firm to change its name to Grindlay, Christian & Matthews in 1839 and Grindlay & Co. from 1843. R.M. Grindlay retired in 1852. Branch firms were opened at Calcutta in 1854 and at Bombay in 1865.^[2] These firms became branches, administered from London, in 1908. Additional branches were opened in Simla (1912), Delhi (1923), Lahore (1924) and Peshawar (1926).

In 1923, National Provincial Bank acquired Grindlay & Co. and converted it to a limited liability company which would operate separately. By 1928, its balance sheet totalled almost £3 million.^[2] When National Provincial decided to exit overseas banking in 1948, it sold Grindlays to the National Bank of India (NBI), in which it took a small share position. NBI and Grindlays finally merged in 1958 under the name National and Grindlays Bank (NGB). Three years later, in 1961, NGB exchanged a 25 per cent share in NGB for Lloyds Bank’s Eastern Division. In 1969, Citi took a 40 per cent stake in NGB.

Also in 1969, the Ottoman Bank sold its branches in London, Cyprus, Sudan, Jordania, East Africa, the Emirates and Rhodesia to the National and Grindlays Bank. Grindlays Bank later bought the Ottoman Bank's operations in France and Geneva from Banque Ottomane, and renamed them to Grindlays Bank - France^[3]

In 1984 Citi and Lloyds sold Grindlays to ANZ. In 1989, five years after it acquired Grindlays, ANZ changed Grindlays' legal domicile to Australia and the bank's name to ANZ Grindlays. In 1994, ANZ Grindlays sold its African operations to Standard Bank Investment Corporation (Stanbic), which was the holding company for Standard Bank of South Africa's operations outside South Africa. Standard Chartered Bank had sold its shares in Standard Bank of South Africa to the bank's existing shareholders in 1987 to escape anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa.

In 2000, ANZ sold its Grindlays subsidiary to Standard Chartered Plc which merged it with its existing banking operations.