Bank of Calcutta

Not to be confused with The Calcutta Bank (1824).

Bank of Bengal

Formerly	Bank of Calcutta
Industry	Banking, financial services
Founded	2 June 1806;218 years ago (2 June 1806)
Defunct	27 January 1921;104 years ago (27 January 1921)
Fate	Merged with Bank of Bombay and Bank of Madras
Successor	Imperial Bank of India
Headquarters	Calcutta, Bengal Presidency , British India
Area served	British India

Share of the Bank of Bengal, issued on 13 May 1876.

The Bank of Calcutta (a precursor to the present State Bank of India) was founded on 2 June 1806, mainly to fund General Arthur Wellesley's wars against Tipu Sultan and the Marathas. It was the tenth oldest bank in India and was renamed Bank of Bengal on 2 January 1809.

History

A bill of exchange processed by the Bank of Bengal, 1886.

The bank opened branches at Rangoon (1861), Patna (1862), Mirzapur (1862), and Benares (1862). When it became known that the bank intended to open a branch at Dacca, negotiations began that resulted in Bank of Bengal in 1862 amalgamating The Dacca Bank (1846). ^[1] A branch at Cawnpore followed.

Famous Customers

Among the bank's renowned customers were scholar and politician Dadabhai Naoroji, scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, India's first President Rajendra Prasad, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and educationalist Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. ^[2]

Work

The bank was risk averse and would not lend for more than three months, leading to local businessmen, both British and Indian, launching private banks, many of which failed. The most storied bank failure was The Union Bank (1828) founded by Dwarakanath Tagore in partnership with British companies. ^[3]

The Bank of Calcutta, and the two other Presidency banks – the Bank of Bombay and the Bank of Madras – amalgamated on 27 January 1921. The reorganized banking entity assumed the name Imperial Bank of India. ^[4] The Reserve Bank of India, which is the central banking organization of India, in the year 1955, acquired a controlling interest in the Imperial Bank of India and the Imperial Bank of India was renamed on 30 April 1955 as the State Bank of India.

See also

• Banking in India
• History of banking
• List of banks that have merged to form the State Bank of India

References

1. Banker's Magazine, Vol. 22, pp. 565–6.
2. "A walk down history when India banked on Calcutta". The Times of India. 5 January 2020. Archived from the original on 16 October 2022. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
3. Paul, Aniek (22 August 2015). "The chequered history of Kolkata's banks". Livemint. Archived from the original on 8 October 2022. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
4. "Bank of Calcutta, oldest bank of Asia never failed!". Get Bengal. Archived from the original on 2 October 2021. Retrieved 2 October 2021.

Further reading

• "200 years and going strong". The Tribune . Retrieved 8 September 2006.
• Amiya Kumar Bagchi. The Evolution of the State Bank of India. Vol. 1 – The Roots 1806-1876.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)