PORATION, one of the largest and most influential financial institutions in the Far East, with branches in many of the principal cities in China, Japan, Siam, India, Burma and the Straits Settlements, as well as in London, Lyons, Hamburg, New York and San Francisco. The Bank was founded in Hongkong in 1864, and opened its doors to business simultaneously in Hong kong and Shanghai on April 3, 1865. A year later it was incor porated by a Special Ordinance of the Legislative Council of Hongkong, with a capital of silver $5,000,000 divided into 40,00o shares of $125 each.
After 1870 extension was rapid, due to a great extent to the work of the late Sir Thomas Jackson, the chief manager from 1876 to 1902, and the history of the Bank for the past half century has been one of signal and continuous progress. The capital has been increased on four separate occasions, in 1883, 1890, 1907 and 1921, to its present figure of $20,000,000.
Apart from its ordinary routine banking operations the Hong kong Bank has from its earliest days enjoyed the confidence of the leading statesmen and financiers of China, and has been responsible for the issue of the principal Government and rail way loans. At first without competition, later in association with other British banking houses, and since 1913 as head of the British group in the international Consortium of Banks, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank has been closely associated with the whole of China's foreign financial transactions. The court of directors and general management remains as from the first in Hongkong. (A. Mort.)