The forty-fifth annual general meeting of the shareholders of the Bank, held at Winchester House, Old Broad Street, London, E.C., on, March 29. Sir Charles A. Innes, KCSI, C.LE. (the chairman), presided, The chairman s:
I do not think that I need say very much-about the Accounts, I presume that as usual you will allow meto take them as read, You will notice in the Balance Sheet' that our deposits are up by £1,350,000 compared with last year, and that on the other side there has been an' increase of about cne million sterling in Loans and Advances. Our allocations to the Pension Fund, the Premises Account and Contingencies are the same as last year. The figure which doubtless interests you most is the amount of net profit for the year, This is about the same as last year in spite of our having had to provide for National Defence Contribution for nine months, You have heard so much of the recovery of trade that some of you may have expected a larger figure of profit. But the Bank is an Exchange Bank mainly engaged the financing of Eastern trade, and it is well known that the recovery of foreign trade has lagged behind that of home trade; Moreover we had special difficulties in 1937. The year indeed began well. In the first three months trade was active in most of the countries in which we operate, and®indeea by March trade conditions in some of them hád almost begun to approach the dimensions of a boom But the second half of the year did not fulfil the promise of the first. The first setback was associated with what is usually known as the "gold scare" in the spring. Then in August followed the invasion of China by Japan, You can readily imagine how this war disorganized the trade of China, and its repercussions were felt in almost every country in which we are established, particularly India and Malaya. Finally' there came in the autumn the quite unexpected recession of trade in the United States of America. The effects of this recession were world-wide, but America so dominates the market in such commodities as rubber and tin that nowhere were they felt with greater severity than in countries like Malaya. In the meantime I think I have, said enough to show that having regard to all the circumstances of the year we may legitimately regard our net profit with satisfaction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.