Bank of New Zealand

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bank of New Zealand

logo
legal form Limited
founding July 29, 1861
Seat Auckland
management Andrew Gregory Thorburn, ( CEO )
Number of employees 840
sales NZ $ 5.9 billion in 2008
Branch Banking, finance
Website www.bnz.co.nz

The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) is the second largest commercial bank in New Zealand in terms of assets and the fourth largest in terms of total assets . The bank, headquartered in Auckland , has been owned by the Australian National Australia Bank since 1992 .

history

The history of the Bank of New Zealand goes way back to the founding days of the once British colony of New Zealand. In the mid-19th century there was a notorious shortage of money in circulation in the colony , the New Zealand pound . Several attempts by New Zealand Governors Robert FitzRoy , George Edward Gray and Thomas Gore Browne to change this situation have failed. All four banks that were newly founded in the colony between 1840 and 1857 failed to achieve their goals and were dissolved again. The only bank that supplied and controlled the colony's money market at the same time was the Australian Union Bank of Australia , which later became the Australia and New Zealand Bank (ANZ) through a merger with the Bank of Australasia .

The scarcity of money, the dominant Union Bank of Australia and the start of the gold rush in Otago in May 1861 were the reasons to put the New Zealand banking system on a new and healthier footing. The New Zealand Bank Act 1861 gave permission to create the Bank of New Zealand, to print and circulate its own banknotes . The same right was u. a. also the Bank of New South Wales via the Bank of New South Wales Act 1861 . Three more banks were to follow in 1864, 1873 and 1874 with corresponding rights.

Bank building in rural area, Middlemarch

After the founding of the Bank of New Zealand on July 29, 1861, the start of its first business activities followed on October 16, 1861 in Auckland. This was followed by the opening of the first branch on December 2, 1881 in Dunedin on the South Island , the city that was to become the largest and richest city in New Zealand for a few decades due to the gold rush in the province of Otago .

A good year after the bank was founded, the Bank of New Zealand opened an office in London in October 1862 , opened a branch in Wellington in the same year and gradually expanded the country's capital into a financial metropolis , and then in the 1890s as Dunedin to replace the most important financial center of the two islands. As early as 1865, the bank had established itself as by far the largest bank in the country with a turnover of £ 360,000.

In 1895 the Bank of New Zealand, even in difficulty, took over the Colonial Bank of New Zealand , founded in Dunedin in 1874, only to be rescued by the state with the Bank of New Zealand Banking Act 1895 and a handsome capital injection. The state took over the bank completely in 1945, and in 1986 a change in the law made it possible for investors to participate in up to a third of the equity . On March 14, 1989, the bank was officially registered as a Limited under the Companies Act . At the end of the 1980s the bank got into trouble again and the New Zealand government had to invest it together with the company Fay Richwhite & Co. (subsidiary Capital Markets Ltd. owned 30% from June 1989) with over NZ $ 1.1 billion Years 1990 and 1991.

Old logo, used until September 2008.

In 1992 the Bank of New Zealand was finally sold to the National Australia Bank Group . On October 1, 2008, the brand name was changed from Bank of New Zealand to BNZ. The company name ( company ) remained unchanged.

today

The Deloitte Center in Auckland after its completion in 2010

After the merger of ANZ Bank and the National Bank of New Zealand in 2003, the Bank of New Zealand, once the largest bank in New Zealand, ranks third among the commercial banks with a branch network based on the total assets of all banks. Although the commercial bank is actually focused on the New Zealand market, the bank has been providing financial investment services in Singapore since 1973 .

In July 2006, the Bank of New Zealand was ordered to pay back NZ $ 5 million to its credit card customers. Like other credit institutions, the company had not made its customers aware of fees charged for foreign exchange transactions in accordance with the Fair Trading Act . The Commerce Commission also fined the company NZ $ 550,000.

In October 2009, as planned, the new offices of the bank's head office in the NZ $ 200 million office tower, the Deloitte Center in Auckland, should move into. The Bank of New Zealand was to become one of the largest tenants in its own prestige property . The criticism in the Eye on Auckland blog showed that the new building in Auckland was not welcomed by everyone .

literature

  • Ken Matthews: The legal history of money in New Zealand . In: Reserve Bank of New Zealand (ed.): Bulletin . Volume 66. No. 1. Wellington March 2003 (English).
  • Bank of New Zealand (Ed.): General Disclosure Statement No 51 . Auckland December 4, 2008 (English).
  • Bank of New Zealand (Ed.): General Disclosure Statement No 53 . Auckland June 9, 2009 (English).

Web links

Commons : Bank of New Zealand  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • Homepage. Bank of New Zealand, accessed August 12, 2012 .
  • Homepage. National Australia Bank, accessed August 12, 2012 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bank of New Zealand (Ed.): General Disclosure Statement No 53 . Auckland June 9, 2009 (English).
  2. ↑ Bank of New Zealand - Internship Abroad. World of XChange, accessed August 13, 2012 .
  3. ^ Reserve Bank of New Zealand (ed.): Financial Stability Report . May 2009, ISSN  1176-7863 (English).
  4. ↑ a b History. Bank of New Zealand, accessed August 13, 2012 .
  5. ^ Story: Wellington region - From town to city: 1865–1899. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, accessed July 14, 2009 .
  6. ^ History of New Zealand Banking. Banknotes.ws by AJ Clifford, archived from the original on March 3, 2009 ; accessed on July 14, 2009 (English, original website no longer available).
  7. ↑ Banking - Early Difficulties. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, accessed July 14, 2009 .
  8. ^ A b Kurt Hess: Credit Loss Dynamics in Australasian Banking . Ed .: University of Waikato, Department of Economics. Waikato April 2008 (English).
  9. ^ Bank of New Zealand (428849) Registered. In: New Zealand Companies Office. Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment , accessed August 26, 2019 .
  10. ^ Welcome to Bank of New Zealand Singapore. Bank of New Zealand, archived from the original on April 18, 2010 ; accessed on August 13, 2012 (English, original website no longer available).
  11. ↑ ASB to pay $ 4.1 million over credit card fees. Commerce Commission, June 15, 2007, archived from the original on December 7, 2008 ; accessed on August 13, 2012 (English, original website no longer available).
  12. ^ Anne Gibson: $ 200m tower nearly finished. New Zealand Herald - Online Edition, July 15, 2009, accessed July 15, 2009 .
  13. ^ Project Deloitte Center & Tower. Eye on Auckland blog, accessed July 15, 2009 .