REASSURING STATEMENT.

Wairarapa Age, 4 May 1931, Page 5

REASSURING STATEMENT.

BANK WILL NEVER CLOSE ITS DOORS. SIR ROBT. GIBSON'S BROADCAST. (Received This Day, 0.20 a.m.) SYDNEY, May 3. Sir Robert Gibson, broadcasting to the four States at nine o’clock to-night, assured customers of the Commonwealth Bank that it would never close its doors. He said the Commonwealth had the backing of the note issue and he had the authority of the Prime Minister to say that the Government would support the Bank Board in any extension of the note issue the board deemed desirable in any emergency. The bank would meet every demand upon it. Quite a number of timid people, added Sir Robert Gibson, feared that the Commonwealth Bank would close its doors. "I know no safer place for one’s savings than the Commonwealth Bank,” he said, "and if anyone thinks he can find a safer place, then by all means let him come'to the bank and take his money away.” Sir Robert Gibson explained Saturday’s run on the Commonwealth ’Savings Bank as being due to timidity on the part of new customers who withdraw their savings from the Government Savings Bank and were largely responsible for its failure. Those same people, his officers informed him, were now rushing the Commonwealth Bank to transfer their accounts to some other bank, which was thought to be safer. Quie definitely, he wished to tell those people that the Commonwealth Bank did not want their business and the sooner they took their money out the better the Commonwealth Bank would like them. The Commonwealth Bank wanted regular and reliable customers. So far as the old customers of the Commonwealth Bank were concerned he could assure them that the Bank Board would do nothing to jeopardise their savings in any respect.