| Activity | Westminster Bank was a British commercial bank which operated in England and Wales, it was considered one of the Big Five, it expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies: especially regional banks.
The Westminster Bank was organised in 1834 as the London and Westminster Bank, the first joint-stock bank in London. The firm was the first bank established under the Bank Charter Act 1833, which allowed joint-stock banks to be founded in London. For various reasons such as the Bank of England's hostility to the Act the London and Westminster's management was primarily concerned with defending the company's right to exist rather than setting up an extensive branch network. As a result, the bank opened only six London branches in its first three years and no additional offices were established until nearly twenty years later.
London and Westminster made its first acquisition in 1847, when it bought Young & Son. In around 1870 it acquired Unity Joint-Stock Bank, and mergers with Commercial Bank of London and Middlesex Bank had been arranged in 1861 and 1863 respectively. By 1909 London and Westminster had opened or acquired 37 branches in and around London. Yet, despite this expansion effort, the bank felt the effects of competition from provincial banks like Lloyds and Midland. These two banks had already established large regional branch networks and were quickly encroaching upon the London market. In order to meet this challenge in 1909 London and Westminster merged with the influential and prestigious London and County Bank, which had seventy offices citywide and almost two hundred in rural counties, making it the largest British bank. The new firm was called The resulting entity was named the London County and Westminster Bank. From 1913 the compnay then started branching into continental Europe.
The next bige merger was with National Provincial Bank in 1968, by this time Westminster Bank had 1,400 branches in England. The District Bank (a National Provincial acquisition), National Provincial and Westminster Bank were fully integrated in the new firm's structure, while Coutts & Co. (a National Provincial acquisition), Ulster Bank and the Isle of Man Bank (a National Provincial acquisition) continued as separate operations. Duncan Stirling, chairman of Westminster Bank, became first chairman of the fifth largest bank in the world. In 1969 David Robarts, former chairman of National Provincial, assumed Stirling's position. The statutory process of integration was completed in 1969 and the new company, National Westminster Bank Limited, opened its doors for business on 1 January 1970. NatWest, as it became known, is now part of the The Royal Bank of Scotland Group. |