10th June, Tue news was received with very general regret here yesterday morning, though not altogether with surprise, that ti Acting Manager of the New Oriental Bank Corporation, Limited, had received instructions by telegraph from his Directors in London, to suspend payment. No further details were then known. The last annual report and balance-sheet, dated 16th June and 31st March, 1891, respectively, showed that while some heavy extraordinary losses had been incurred, the bank was able to pay a dividend at the rate of six per cent,, leaving some £20,000 to carry forward, the sum of £165,000 being put aside to meet contingencies. "Phe necessary sum had been written off to return the Bank's capital abroad and bring it up to a gold basis, and it had been replaced by silver capital raised locally, which Was not subject to depreciation. The contingencies at this time last year must have been much larger that the sum put aside to meet them, or there must have been heavy losses since, which is not at all improbable, considering the character of the last year. The bank has no reserve fund and it is not a propitious time for a financial institution that requires assistance, and therefore its doors have had to be closed. The hope is general that the difficulty is only temporary, and that the. Directors will succeed in setting the bank on its legs again; it would be felt as an absolute calamity here if the well-known and popular " 0.B.C." were to disappear altogether from among us.
In writing in these columns eight years ago on the suspension of the Oriental Bank Corporation, we said "he origin of the Oriental Bank Corporation was the Bank of Western Tudia, a small concern founded in Bombay in 1842, which became the Oriental Bank in 1845. It was probably between these years that the chief office was removed to London, where Mr. H. G. Gordon became Chairman, and Mr. W. W. Cargill General Manager. Branches had been established in Hongkong and Canton before 1845, when the change in the designation of the Bank was intimated in the Hongkong papers. An agency was opened here iv about 1850-51, and the Bank was the first to offer banking facilities to merchants, These were for many years confined to dealing in exchange. In one of the occasional market reports which appeared in the N-C. Herald of the latter year, we find the Uriental Bank's bills quoted at 4s, 11d., while credits ranged at from 4s. 11d. to 5s. per dollar. "In August, 1851, a royal charter was obtained, and the Oriental Bank became the Oriental Bank Corporation. The business of the new bank was extended to Australia soon afterward, and in later times to South Africa, with results that proved most unfortunate for the bank. But for a great
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.