History
CBC can trace its history back to 1920 when Eastern Bank, a British overseas bank, opened a branch in Ceylon. In 1957, Chartered Bank (another British overseas bank; see below) acquired Eastern Bank but ran it separately. Four years later, the Government of Ceylon forbade foreign banks to accept deposits from Ceylonese nationals. In response, Eastern Bank incorporated its branch under the name, Commercial Bank of Ceylon and took 40% of the equity. CBC got Mercantile Bank of India’s branches in Kandy, Galle and Jaffna as part of a deal that would remove the government’s limit on deposit taking in Mercantile’s remaining branches in Colombo and Pettah. The branches actually transferred in 1973. (HSBC had acquired Mercantile in 1959.) Then in 1971 Eastern bank amalgamated with Chartered Bank, which four years later merged with Standard Bank to form Standard Chartered Bank.
In 1997 Standard Chartered divested itself of its 40% stake in CBC. DFCC Bank (formerly Development Finance Corporation of Ceylon) acquired 29.5%.
In 2003, CBC acquired Credit Agricole Indosuez's two branches in Bangladesh at Dhaka and Chittagong to become the first Sri Lankan bank to establish operations outside the country. (Banque Indosuez had opened its branches in Bangladesh in 1980.) Also in 2003, the IFC bought 15% of the bank's share capital from Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Commercial Bank Of Ceylon
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)