Midland Bank
| Midland Bank Plc
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Public limited company |
| founding | 1836 |
| Seat | London , UK |
| Branch | banks and insurance companies |
The Midland Bank Plc was one of the largest banking groups in Britain in the 20th century. Today she is part of the HSBC Group. It was founded in Birmingham in August 1836 under the name Birmingham and Midland Bank . It first expanded into the Midlands by taking over various local banks. In 1891 it merged with the Central Bank of London Ltd and became the London City and Midland Bank . After a phase of nationwide expansion including the takeover of various small banks, the name Midland Bank Ltd was finally adopted in 1923 . By 1934 it was finally the largest discount bank in the world. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was part of the FTSE 100 index . In 1992 it was taken over by HSBC Holdings plc.
history
Early history
Midland Bank was founded in Birmingham in 1836 by Charles Geach . Charles Geach, also the first manager of the bank, was previously an employee of the Bank of England . To start with, he secured the support and equity backing of leading companies and dealers in Birmingham.
Midland Bank occupied an important market niche in Birmingham in the 1830s and 1840s, particularly when it came to discounting bills of exchange for its clients. Their relationship with regional business enterprises was particularly intense. Their customers included railway companies, iron foundries, engineering companies, but also utility companies and municipal companies.
The bank made decisive acquisitions in the early years, the most important of which were the takeover of Stourbridge Old Bank in 1851 and Nichols, Baker and Crane of Bewdley in 1862. Both companies were among the pioneers of banking in the West Midlands, with Stourbridge Bank as early as 1762 founded the Bewdley Bank in 1777.
Acquisition and development in the first 50 years
From the 1880s the bank expanded by opening new branches and taking over other banks. In 1891 the Central Bank of London was acquired (whereby the Midland Bank got a seat in the London Clearing House ), in 1898 the City Bank was acquired (this also had its headquarters in London ).
By 1918, Midland Bank was considered the largest bank in the world with a capital contribution of £ 335 million. Edward Hopkinson Holden led the bank from 1898 to 1908 as managing director and from 1908 until his death in 1919 as managing director and chairman of the board. Between 1891 and 1918, he managed more than 20 bank mergers and opened branches throughout England and Wales.
Holden also expanded overseas, with Midland being the first British bank to set up a global currency trading business and cooperating with over 650 banks under the name London Bank . The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation assumed responsibility for this business from 1907 .
After the First World War , the leading British banks entered into an agreement with the government not to carry out any further acquisitions without government approval. One result of this agreement was that Midland Bank concentrated on expanding its branch network, offering new services, advancing the mechanization of its systems and promoting its services.
Post-war development and international alliances
Midland responded to the lifting of government credit restrictions in 1958 by expanding its branch network and introducing various innovative services, including personal loans (1958), personal checking accounts (1958) and credit cards (1966). In 1958, the Forward Trust was taken over, which eventually became the leading provider of installment financing, leasing and billing services.
In 1967 Midland took over a stake in the Montagu Trust from Samuel Montagu & Co. Limited and became the first UK clearing bank to have a stake in a merchant bank in London . Samuel Montagu's credit institute , Samuel Montagu & Co. Limited , which has existed since 1853, became a wholly-owned subsidiary in 1974 and is now part of HSBC's private customer business. Furthermore, through this acquisition, Midland became the majority owner of Guyerzeller Bank AG (later HSBC Guyerzeller Bank ) in Switzerland .
Further diversification took place in 1972 when Midland took over Thomas Cook Reisen as a leading member of a consortium . After becoming the sole owner in 1977, the company was sold in 1992.
From 1974 onwards, Midland expanded mainly in overseas countries and increasingly acquired international banks. The largest investment of this was the majority stake in the US bank Crocker National of California . The investment was unsuccessful, so Midland was forced to take over the bank completely in 1985 and sell it to Wells Fargo the following year .
In 1980, Midland took over the majority stake in Trinkaus & Burkhardt KGaA , a German private bank with a tradition that is as long as its own. Today, as HSBC Trinkaus , this part occupies a leading position in commercial and investment banking .
Takeover by the HSBC Group
In 1987 the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC ) initially took over 14.9% of Midland and a close cooperation developed between the banks. In 1989 First Direct was included in the cooperation and took over the telephone banking , with a 24 hour service, 365 days a year.
The full takeover by HSBC Holdings plc finally took place in 1992. At that time, it was one of the largest mergers in banking history and enabled HSBC, which relocated its headquarters from Hong Kong to London, subject to the approval of the banking supervision by the Bank of England , to set up a European headquarters that represented its business interests in addition to the locations in Asia and America.
In 1999, Midland Bank was finally renamed HSBC and thus part of the HSBC Group.
The City and Midland Bank's first London headquarters , 5 Threadneedle Street, is now a bar with the former ticket hall as its centerpiece. In recent years it has been expanded into an elegant hotel with a bar and restaurant.
The later headquarters of the bank in London, opposite the Bank of England on Poultry and Princes Street, was sold to a Russian tycoon in 2006, and the counter hall and the huge underground basements were finally cleared by HSBC in 2007. The building designed by Lutyens and built between 1921 and 1939, the pride of the world's largest bank in the 1930s, is to be converted into a hotel.
Others
The Midland Bank was famous for its golden logo with a griffin surrounded by golden coins on an initially black, later blue background and its advertising slogan "the listening bank", written by the well-known jingle composer Rod Allen .
The bank's advertising appears in the Theme Park , a computer game that was popular in the 1990s . The Midland Bank initially operated as Midland Bank, albeit with the HSBC logo, until it was finally completely taken over by the HSBC brand and thus group in 1999.
Web links
- Company history
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Midland Bank in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ HSBC History ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Bonds at Threadneedles
- ↑ Russian tycoon buys former Midland HQ
