Eastern Bank Ltd (historic)
| Fate | Acquired by Chartered Bank (1957) Amalgamated into Standard Chartered (1971) |
|---|---|
| Successor |
Standard Chartered (1971) |
| Founded | 1909 |
| Defunct | 1971 |
The Eastern Bank Limited, was a British bank founded in 1909 in London, to help finance trade with Far east. In 1957 Chartered Bank (now Standard Chartered Bank), acquired Eastern, and eventually absorbed it into Standard Chartered in 1971.
Eastern Bank Limited was founded in 1909 in London, as a new Eastern exchange bank, to help finance trade with the far east. The next year Eastern established branches in Bombay and Calcutta. Right from its inception, the bank had a number of powerful institutional shareholders, including the Sassoon family.
Eastern expanded into the Ottoman province of Mesopotamia (now Iraq), opening a Baghdad branch in 1912. The province had promises of a lucrative oil exploration concession, being actively pursued by a consortium which included Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP), Royal Dutch Shell, and Deutsche Bank named - Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), now Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Eastern Bank had to close its Baghdad branch at the start of the World War I due to the alliance from the Ottoman Empire and German Empire, and competition from other banks that included Deutsche Bank and The National Bank of Turkey. However, Eastern reopened its Baghdad branch within a year and opened branches in Basra (1915), and Amarah (1916), in the wake of the British invasion of Iraq. With the establishment of a British Mandate over Iraq, the bank expanded further into Mosul (1919) and Kirkuk (1926).
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