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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The amalgamation movement in banking in South Africa, 1863-1920 |
Author: | Jones, F. Stuart |
Year: | 1999 |
Periodical: | South African Journal of Economics |
Volume: | 67 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 111-156 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | banking central banks |
External link: | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1813-6982.1999.tb01135.x/pdf |
Abstract: | This article examines how and why bank amalgamations in South Africa occurred. It shows that bank amalgamation took place in two phases. The first phase started in the Cape in 1863, with the Standard Bank absorbing three small Cape banks, and ended in 1892, with the African Banking Corporation absorbing the Worcester Commercial Bank. By then, all the Cape local banks had vanished from the scene, save the Stellenbosch District Bank. In this period, there was little opportunity for an amalgamation movement in either Natal or Orange Free State: these States could not support more than one local bank. In the second phase, triggered by the impending union of the colonies in 1910, the Transvaal-based National Bank gobbled up the remaining locally-owned banks and one of the three imperial banks. The process was completed in 1920 when the Standard Bank amalgamated with the African Banking Corporation. By 1920 the number of national banking institutions in South Africa had been reduced to two, the Standard Bank and the National Bank. The conclusion is that this banking structure, a duopoly, was very beneficial to the country. Bank crises in other parts of the world had hardly any influence on the South African banking scene. App., bibliogr. |