A CENTURY OF BUSINESS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4233, 19 January 1940, Page 4

A CENTURY OF BUSINESS

UNION BANK IN NEW ZEALAND SOUVENIR PUBLICATION. Fittingly to mark its first 100 years of business in New Zealand, which coincides with the, Centennial of the Dominion, the Union Bank of Australia, Ltd., has issued a handsome souvenir publication, a copy of which has been received from the bank’s inspector for New Zealand, Mr T. P. Fotheringham, through the local office. In extending congratulations to the Dominion on the occasion of its important national celebration, the Union Bank remarks that “New Zealanders have good reason to recall the past with pride when it is remembered that the foundations laid by the colonists a short hundred years ago have proved so sound a base on which to build the nation of to-day.” The Union Bank of Australia celebrated its own centenary three years ago. It is stated in the souvenir publication that the bank regards the year 1940 with more than ordinary interest, as it marks the centenary of the establishment of its first New Zealand branch. It was opened at Britannia (now Petone), under arrangement with the New Zealand Company, on March 24, 1840. “Thus the bank was actively assisting the development of New Zealand even before British sovereignty was proclaimed (the Treaty of Waitangi was not signed till some months later) and it enjoys the distinction of being the pioneer bank of New Zealand and the oldest established business in the country. The bank’s story, therefore, is something more than an ordinary record of the growth of a great banking institution; in many ways its history, during the last hundred years, fits into the larger history of New Zealand and of the British Empire itself.”

There is an interesting story of George Fife Angus, the founder of the Union Bank, whose portrait is the frontispiece of the publication. The first New Zealand branch of the 1 bank was opened at Britannia (Petone Beach), the . manager, Mr John Smith, and his staff and equipment having arrived from London in the ship Glenbervie on March 7, 1840. Later in the same year the settlement was transferred to the present site of the city of Wellington and the branch to Lombard Street. In 1852 the bank moved to the site in Willis Street now occupied by the Hotel St. George, and in 1872 a further move was made to the present site in Lambton Quay. The story of the expansion of the bank’s business throughout New Zealand is full of historical interest and is illustrated with numerous engravings, including one of the notes issued on March 24, 1840, which returned to New Zealand from the United States in 1934 and was duly honoured. There is also a reproduction of the front page of the New Zealand Gazette No. 1.