Australia and New Zealand bank: the Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia limited 1828-1951

Australia and New Zealand Bank Limited was created in 1951 by the merging of the Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia. Both were incorporated in and mainly capitalized from Britain, and their head offices were in London. The former began business in 1835, and in its early years absorbed two small banks: the Comwall Bank in Launceston, and the Bank of Western Aus tralia in Perth. The latter commenced in 1857, absorbing both the Tamar Bank and Archers Gilles & Company in Launceston, the Bathurst Bank (New South Wales) and the Bank of South Australia, itself a British bank, and the first bank in South Australia.

This book is an account of the history of eight banks which Australia and New Zealand Bank counts as its ancestors. It is not meant, at least not primarily, for specialists in history or economics, but for a wider audience. The materials used are vast, scattered, and extremely diverse, mostly in manuscript, and largely not avail able for public reference. To have documented the work with a wealth of footnotes might have satisfied a scholar's conscience, but for the general reader would have interposed an unnecessary and discouraging barrier, while the professional historian or economist would have been frustrated and irritated by voluminous references to source material which could not be consulted. Footnotes have therefore been ruthlessly excluded, references to quotations being woven into the text.