Commercial Overprint Society of Great Britain
Vol. 2 No. 12; June 1, 2005
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
by Jeffrey Turnbull
The HSBC Group is named after its founding member, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, which was established in 1865 in Hong Kong and Shanghai to finance the growing trade between China and Europe.
The senior officers of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1870. The bank's first manager, Victor Kresser, is seated at the center of the group.
The inspiration behind the founding of the Bank was Thomas Sutherland, a Scot who was then working as the Hong Kong Superintendent of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. He realized that there was considerable demand for local banking facilities both in Hong Kong and along the China coast and he helped to establish the bank in March 1865. Then, as now, the bank's headquarters were at 1 Queen's Road Central in Hong Kong and a branch was opened one month later in Shanghai.
Throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the bank established a network of agencies and branches based mainly in China and South East Asia but also with representation in the Indian sub-continent, Japan, Europe and North America. In many of its branches the Bank was the pioneer of modern banking practices. From the outset, trade finance was a strong feature of the bank's business with bullion, exchange and merchant banking also playing an important part. Additionally, the Bank issued notes in many countries throughout the Far East.
In 1959 the bank completed two important purchases, those of The British Bank of the Middle East (now HSBC Bank Middle East) and the Mercantile Bank. The British Bank of the Middle East had begun life as the Imperial Bank of Persia in 1889 but throughout the 1940s and 1950s had extended its sphere of operations and pioneered banking in the Gulf States. The history of Mercantile Bank stretched back to 1853—the year it was founded in Bombay (now Mumbai)—and by the 1950s it had a strong identity within Indian and other Asian markets.
In 1965 the Bank purchased a controlling interest in Hang Seng Bank, which had been established in Hong Kong in 1933. By the 1970s the policy of expansion by acquisition of subsidiaries with their own identities and specializations was firmly in place.
The 1990s have seen further expansion and consolidation of the various businesses of the HSBC Group. In the United States, a joint venture, the Wells Fargo HSBC Trade Bank was formed in 1995. Elsewhere in the Americas in 1997, a new subsidiary Banco HSBC Bamerindus was established in Brazil; the acquisition of the Roberts Group (now called HSBC Bank Argentina SA) in Argentina was completed, and a 19.9 per cent interest in Mexico's Grupo Financiero Serfin was purchased. In 1999, HSBC Holdings Plc signed a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Korea for the acquisition of a controlling interest in Seoul Bank, one of the largest commercial banks in South Korea.
The HSBC Group now comprises a unique range of banks and financial service providers around the globe.
HSBC Overprints
There are two main patterns, which are most easily identified by the shape of the ampersand. We will refer to these as Type I and Type II:
The Type I overprints are found high on the stamp and low:
The Type II overprints are found mainly around the middle of the stamp, although there are some variations of position:
