A brief history of Standard Chartered
Standard Chartered is one of the world's most international banks, headquartered in London. This is summary of the main events in the history of Standard Chartered and some of the organisations with which it merged.
1 The early years
Standard Chartered is named after two banks which merged in 1969. They were originally known as the Standard Bank of British South Africa and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. Of the two banks, the Chartered Bank is the older having been founded in 1853 following the grant of a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria. The moving force behind the Chartered Bank was a Scot, James Wilson, who made his fortune in London making hats. James Wilson went on to start The Economist, still one of the world's pre-eminent publications. Nine years later, in 1862, the Standard Bank was founded by a group of businessmen led by another Scot, John Paterson, who had emigrated to the Cape Province in South Africa and had become a successful merchant. Both banks were keen to capitalise on the huge expansion of trade between Europe, Asia and Africa and to reap the handsome profits to be made from financing that trade. The Chartered Bank opened its first branches in 1858 in Calcutta and Mumbai. A branch opened in Shanghai that summer beginning Standard Chartered's unbroken presence in China. The following year the Chartered Bank opened a branch in Hong Kong and an agency was opened in Singapore. In 1861 the Singapore agency was upgraded to a branch which helped provide finance for the rapidly developing rubber and tin industries in Malaysia. In 1862 the Chartered Bank was authorized to issue bank notes in Hong Kong. Subsequently it was also authorized to issue bank notes in Singapore, a privilege it continued to exercise up until the end of the 19th Century. Over the following decades both the Standard Bank and the Chartered Bank printed bank notes in a variety of countries including China, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and even during the siege of Marketing in South Africa. Today Standard Chartered is still one of the three banks which prints Hong Kong's bank notes.

2 Expansion in Africa and Asia
The Standard Bank opened for business in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1863. It pursued a policy of expansion and soon amalgamated with several other banks including the Commercial Bank of Port Elizabeth, the Colesberg Bank, the British Kaffarian Bank and the Fauresmith Bank. The Standard Bank was prominent in the financing and development of the diamond fields of Kimberly in 1867 and later extended its network further north to the new town of Johannesburg when gold was discovered there in 1885. Over time, half the output of the second largest goldfield in the world passed through the Standard Bank on its way to London. In 1892 the Standard Bank opened for business in Zimbabwe, and expanded into Mozambique in 1894, Botswana in 1897, Malawi in 1901, Zambia in 1906, Kenya, Zanzibar and the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.), in 1911 and Uganda in 1912. Of these new businesses, Botswana, Zanzibar and the D.R.C. proved the most difficult and the branches soon closed. A branch in Botswana opened again in 1934 but lasted for only a year and it was not until 1950 that the Bank re-opened for business in Botswana. In Asia the Chartered Bank expanded opening offices in, Myanmar in 1862, what is now Pakistan and Indonesia in 1863, the Philippines in 1872, Malaysia in 1875, Japan in 1880 and Thailand in 1894. Some 34 years after the Chartered Bank appointed an agent in Sri Lanka it opened a branch in 1892 to take advantage of business from the tea and rubber industries. During 1904 a branch opened in Vietnam. Both the Chartered and the Standard Bank opened offices in New York and Hamburg in the early 1900s. The Chartered Bank gaining the first branch licence to be issued to a foreign bank in New York.

3 The impact of war
Even the First World War offered opportunities for expansion when the Standard Bank set up a branch in Tanzania shortly after British troops occupied the formerly German administered Dar es Salaam in September 1916. Both banks survived the inter-war years but the world trade slump led to the closure of operations in the Canary Islands, Liberia, the Netherlands, and Equatorial Guinea. Disaster struck the Chartered Bank's office in Yokohama, Japan, when it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1923 killing a number of staff. The Chartered Bank was particularly effected by the Second World War when numerous Asian countries were occupied by Japan.
4 The post war years
After the Second World War many countries in Asia and Africa gained their independence. This led to local incorporation in some countries, particularly in Africa. Other operations such as those in Iraq, Angola, Myanmar and Libya were nationalised, while in Indonesia the Jakarta office was destroyed in an attempted coup d'etat. In 1948 the Chartered Bank opened in Bangladesh and during 1957 it acquired the Eastern Bank. The Eastern Bank gave the Chartered Bank a network of branches including Aden, Bahrain, Beirut, Cyprus, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The Chartered Bank also entered into a joint venture to form the Irano-British Bank which opened for business in 1959. The bank grew rapidly and had 24 branches when it was nationalised in 1981. By the mid 1950s the Standard Bank had around 600 offices in Southern, Central and Eastern Africa. Its network grew substantially in 1965 when it merged with the former Bank of British West Africa which had some 60 branches in Nigeria, 40 branches in Ghana and eleven branches in Sierra Leone in addition to operations in Cameroon and Gambia. Despite these acquisitions and expansion into new countries such as Mexico, South Korea and Oman (1968), both the Standard and Chartered Bank networks were comparatively small. Both viewed the future with some trepidation as the need to protect themselves from acquisition became ever more apparent. Standard Chartered PLC In 1969 the decision was made by the Standard Bank and the Chartered Bank to undergo a friendly merger thus forming Standard Chartered PLC. It was one year later that the descendants of the "Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China" were finally permitted to open a representative office in Sydney, Australia. Standard Chartered subsequently acquired the UK based Hodge Group, in which it already had a minority shareholding, and the Wallace Brothers Group. The Hodge Group brought to Standard Chartered an extensive network of UK offices specialising in instalment credit and industrial leasing, and after a period of rationalization its name was changed to Chartered Trust Limited. Standard Chartered's operations in Jersey emerged from the integration of other Hodge Group businesses with those of Wallace Brothers Bank (Jersey), Limited.