Mercantile Bank of India, London and China

For the Florida bank, see South Financial Group.

The Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was an Anglo-Indian with business focus in the Far East.

History

The bank was established in October 1853 in Bombay (now Mumbai), but its headquarters moved to London in 1858^[1]. In November 1854 this Anglo-Indian bank opened an office in Shanghai and in 1857 it established a presence in Hong Kong and became an issuer of Hong Kong banknotes from 1859 to 1892, and from 1912 to 1974.

By 1860 its total assets reached the amount of 21.7 million USD, a medium-sized bank by the standards of that time. (For comparison, one of the leading Anglo-Indian banks, the Oriental Bank Corporation was about three times larger in terms of total assets.) During the Second World War, the Mercantile Bank had to close down several offices in the Far East, but it managed to re-open its offices after the war. The Hong Kong office re-opened in February 1946, the Shanghai office in 1945 (but this office closed again in 1952 due to the Communist Party rule). In 1952, total assets of the bank totaled 205.5 million USD.

This Mercantile Bank is unrelated to Mercantile Bancorporation of the midwestern United States, which also went by the name of Mercantile Bank.

Operations

• Hong Kong
• China
• India

Demise

The Mercantile Bank was acquired in 1959 by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. It was subsequently sold to Citibank in 1984 and to the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd. in 1987.

References

1. ^ The Business History Review, Vol. 72, No. 1 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-6805%28199821%2972%3A1%3C178%3ACBITET%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D&size=LARGE