The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation | |||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 香港上海滙豐銀行有限公司 | ||||||||||||||
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Simplified Chinese | 香港上海汇丰银行有限公司 | ||||||||||||||
Cantonese Yale | Heūnggóng Seuhnghói Wuihfūng ngànhòng yaúhhaahn gūngsī | ||||||||||||||
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Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 匯豐 | ||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 汇丰 | ||||||||||||||
Cantonese Yale | Wuihfūng | ||||||||||||||
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HSBC (Chinese: 滙豐; Cantonese Yale: Wuihfūng), officially known as The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (Chinese: 香港上海滙豐銀行有限公司), is a wholly owned subsidiary of HSBC Holdings, the largest bank in Hong Kong, and operates branches and offices throughout the Asia Pacific region, and in other countries around the world. It is also one of the three commercial banks licensed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to issue banknotes for the Hong Kong dollar.
"The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank" was established in British Hong Kong in 1865 and was incorporated as "The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation" in 1866, and has been based in Hong Kong (although now as a subsidiary) ever since. It was renamed "The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited" in 1989. It is the founding member of the HSBC Group of Banks and Companies, since 1990, is the namesake and one of the leading subsidiaries of the London-based HSBC Holdings PLC. The company's business ranges from the traditional High Street roles of retail banking, commercial banking, corporate banking to investment banking, private banking and global banking.
After the British established Hong Kong as a colony in the aftermath of the First Opium War, merchants from other parts of the British Empire, now in Hong Kong, felt the need for a bank to finance the growing trade, through Hong Kong, and sometimes also through Shanghai, between China and British India, and the rest of the British Empire, and also the rest of Europe, of goods, produces and merchandises of all kinds, but especially of opium, cultivated in or transited (re-exported) through the Raj, and to that end, they organised amongst themselves and formed The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong (March 1865), and in Shanghai a one-month later.