Clydesdale+Bank

=Clydesdale Bank PLC=

Company Number: SC001111 Date of Incorporation: 3rd April 1882 Contact Details: 30 St Vincent Place, Glasgow G1 2HL Operating Details: Active (Public Limited Company) Other names (if known): Function of Company*: Other financial intermediation (6512) Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Glasgow Area of Operation: Across Scotland (owned by a larger, multinational company)


 * Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records
Held By: privately held. Contact the National Register of Archives for Scotland for access details

Scope/type: Governance records (including annual reports, contracts and some minute books) 1840-1980; Financial Records (some balance sheets, account books and ledger books) 1850s-1970s; Banking items 1838-1980s; Some branch records 1850s-1960s; Records of staff, staff magazines, staff activities and associations 1880s-1970s ; Publicity and marketing material (including press cuttings and corporate event details) late 1800s onwards; large library of printed books Also includes records of subsidiaries and constituents, most notably the records of North of Scotland Bank, which are a sizeable collection of financial and governance records. The other banks do not have much more than a couple of items, and include The Cruden Savings Bank, the City of Glasgow Bank, the Western Savings Bank of Scotland and the Eastern Savings Bank of Scotland.

Conditions governing access/use: Company will consider access on a case by case basis

Related records: Some business records held in the Scottish Banking Collection at Glasgow University Archive Services GB 0248 UGD094, UGD129, UGD132 and UGD139

Company History
Clydesdale Bank was founded under the Joint Stock Banking Act in 1838. The first chairman was James Lumsden, and the first manager was Henry Brock (who was charged with initial recruitment to the bank), with James Miller from the Commercial Bank in Edinburgh appointed Secretary. The nominal capital of the bank was £1 million, but the promoters first aimed to achieve half the initial capital of this through 250,000 shares of £20 each, with the minimum shareholding being 10 shares, though in practice share issue raised £600,000. Almost all the investment came from Glasgow and Edinburgh, with only £52,00 shares coming from elsewhere in Scotland and £28,000 from England. The Bank was established in a relatively secure and experienced financial sector. Scotland had three main banks all with over eighty years of experience; The Bank of Scotland, The Royal Bank of Scotland and the British Linen Company, all based in Edinburgh. Scotland had also pioneered joint stock banking from the 1810, and Clydesdale emerged in the middle of a group of 20 that came into existence before 1845.

The aim of the bank was to provide banking services in Glasgow, which were lagging behind that of Edinburgh. In the 1830s these services typically included the lending of money and asset management of customer deposit that we would recognise today. Lumsden at first decided that the bank would be a locally based one, operating out of main headquarters in the centre and a few branches within Glasgow (at Trongate, the Gorbals and Broomielaw). However the director’s of the bank argued for branches in the wider area. The first branch of the bank outside Glasgow was opened in Campbeltown in 1839, and this was swiftly followed by an expansion into Falkirk, Cupar, St Andrews and Alexandria. By 1843 the bank had absorbed the Greenock Union Bank. In 1840 the Bank moved to purpose built headquarters in Queen Street.

The pace of expansion was slowed by the crises of 1847 and 1857, though Clydesdale learnt from the crisis in banking exchange in 1847 and was in better position to weather in 1857. In 1858 it purchased the business of the struggling Edinburgh and Glasgow Bank and acquired its sixteen branches (it seems to have acquired at least some of the business of the Western Bank, which failed in 1857). By 1863 it had bought up the Eastern Bank of Scotland, and that bank’s Dundee headquarters became the Clydesdale Bank branch in the city. In 1871 a new building was constructed on land purchased in St Vincents Street which became the Bank’s new Head Office in 1874. By 1873 it had 71 branches.

The later nineteenth century was a period of expansion, growth and profit for the bank, mainly overseen by Sir James King, who became Chairman of the bank 4 times following his appointment to the Board of Directors in 1866. The only blip in the progress was the opening of 3 branches of the bank in England, which had prompted a furious reaction from the English based banks and a Parliamentary Enquiry. The upshot was that though Clydesdale continued with its branches for a time, it did not expand, and no other Scottish bank followed its lead. However despite this the bank continued to steadily grow, and by 1913 had 149 active branches, nearly all based in Scotland.

In 1920 the bank agreed to an affiliation with the fast-growing London Joint City and Midland Bank (founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank, later known as just the Midland). This was undertaken in a background of mergers and acquisitions of banks by large English based banking companies. Clydesdale and the Midland had had several meetings and negotiations on this point for three years before the eventual merger, and the eventual deal allowed for Clydesdale’s independence and the ability of both bank’s customers to make use of the services offered by the other, and allowed Clydesdale to access the greater financial resources of the Midland without borrowing from the Bank of England.

In 1923 Midland negotiated a similar arrangement with North of Scotland Bank (based in Aberdeen. North of Scotland had become the major bank in that area of Scotland after it acquired the Town and County bank of Aberdeen before the First World War. However North of Scotland refused to adopt a mooted merger with Clydesdale that was placed within the deal.

The merger eventually happened some 27 years later in 1950, after there were refusals to do so in 1937 and 1941. By 1950 Clydesdale was the third largest Scottish Bank and North of Scotland was the eighth and smallest, and the merger allowed for a better pooling of resources in two different areas. Clydesdale and North of Scotland Bank continued to grow under the chairmanship of Sir Harold Yarrow until his death in 1962. In 1963 the bank became simply The Clydesdale Bank, and continues under this name today. In the 1970s the bank became a pioneer in automated banking, introducing ‘Autobank’ ATMs and keypads in its branches.

In 1987 the Midland sold its UK subsidiaries (including Clydesdale) to the National Australia Banking Group (NAB). It became part of the NAB’s subsidiaries in the UK and Ireland which also include Northern Bank (in Northern Ireland), National Irish Bank (in The Republic of Ireland) and Yorkshire Bank (from 1990). It remains part of the NAB to the present day.

See Charles Munn, ‘Clydesdale Bank; The First One Hundred and fifty Years’ (1988, William Collins & Sons, Glasgow & London)