Commercial Bank of Australia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Former Commercial Bank of Australia bank building (1938) in Wondai , Queensland

The Commercial Bank of Australia Limited (CBA) in 1866 in Melbourne , Victoria established. In 1982 the bank merged with the Bank of New South Wales to form Westpac Banking Corporation .

history

Australia

The Commercial Bank of Australia Limited was founded relatively late in 1866 as the tenth commercial bank in the British colony of Victoria. The bank's co-founder and later chairman of the board was the Scottish businessman and twelfth Prime Minister of Victoria, James Service (1823–1899)

Despite the fact that the bank only focused on Victoria in the first few years of its business, business was rather moderate. In 1875, for example, the bank had deposits of 835,197 Australian pounds , compared to the largest bank at the time, the Bank of Victoria , which had 2,983,605 Australian pounds in deposits.

After the start-up boom of the banks and the Australian gold rush from 1851, fierce competition began among the banks. In order to grow and gain market share , the banks opened branches regardless of demand. HG Turner, the general manager of the Commercial Bank of Australia in 1880, was quoted with his critical remarks that there were 326 bank branches in Victoria in 1880 and thus 2760 inhabitants per branch, whereas in England there are 12,000 inhabitants per branch. In some places and districts there were up to 7 branches, where one or two branches would have been enough.

There was also a building boom in the colony . In 1880, 2/3 of all loans in Victoria were secured by mortgages on land. The situation then came to a head at the end of the 1880s. In the first financial crash of 1891-1892, the housing construction and finance companies that had emerged in the real estate boom of the 1880s were particularly hard hit. Between 1891 and 1993, 54 of them ceased business activities, 32 of them for good. Because bank customers tried to withdraw their deposits as quickly as possible, 26 banks had to temporarily close their doors between July 24, 1891 and June 8, 1892.

The first bank to go into liquidation in the second crash in 1893 was the Federal Bank of Australia in January 1893. It was then the Commercial Bank of Australia, which after it closed for 30 days from April 5th caused a panic in the financial market. Both banks were of great importance for the real estate market. The market reactions were correspondingly violent. Twelve more banks followed with closings in quick succession, adding to the panic.

Although the Commercial Bank of Australia reopened after 30 days after its restructuring , other banks stayed closed for up to 130 days, exacerbating the financial bottlenecks. At that time the commercial banks controlled about 70% of all deposits and 50% of these deposits were withdrawn from the market with the closings. In some cases, withdrawals from deposits lasted until the early 1900s.

In 1982 the Commercial Bank of Australia Limited merged with the Bank of New South Wales and became Westpac Banking Corporation.

New Zealand

In 1913, the Commercial Bank of Australia was licensed in New Zealand with the Commercial Bank of Australia (Ltd) Act and, like other New Zealand banks, was granted the right to issue banknotes . The bank opened 19 branches across the country but did not play a significant role. By 1934, only 3% of all New Zealand banknotes were issued by the Commercial Bank of Australia.

In 1982, the New Zealand Commercial Bank of Australia Limited merged with the Bank of New South Wales and were renamed the New Zealand Westpac Banking Corporation. A restructuring in 2006 then resulted in Westpac New Zealand Limited.

See other main article: Westpac New Zealand

literature

  • Sydney James Butlin : Australia and New Zealand Bank. Longmans, London 1961.
  • Matthew Wright: The policy origins of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bulletin Vol. 69 No. September 3, 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Service - re-member - a database of all Victorian MPs since 1851 - (accessed July 24, 2009)
  2. ^ A b c Sydney James Butlin : Australia and New Zealand Bank. Longmans, London 1961.
  3. ^ A b Chay Fisher, Christopher Kent, Two Depressions, One Banking Collapse (Research Discussion Paper) , Reserve Bank of Australia, June 1999.
  4. ^ John Waugh, Company Law and the Crash of the 1890s in Victoria , UNSW Law Jurnal, 1992.
  5. ^ Significant Events to 1900 . (PDF 161 kB) Australian Governement , accessed on January 20, 2016 (English).
  6. ↑ Jeffrey Carmichael, Neil Esho, Asset Price Bubbles and Prudential Regulation , Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Working Paper 2001 - 03.
  7. ^ Matthew Wright, The policy origins of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand , Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bulletin Vol. 69 No. September 3, 2006.
  8. ↑ Our History - Westpac New Zealand Limited - (accessed July 24, 2009)
  9. ^ Commercial Bank of Australia 1866-1981 . AJ Clifford , archived from the original on September 7, 2009 ; accessed on April 5, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).