Standard Chartered Hall
Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited
Standard Chartered’s relationship with Hong Kong feels distant yet close. Its forerunner opened in Hong Kong as early as 1859 and was issuing banknotes here by 1862 — three years before HSBC. Its Chinese name, 渣打 (za da), is a transliteration, and many Hong Kong people know little of its meaning or the bank’s history. What feels most familiar may be the “Za Ma” (渣馬, the Standard Chartered Marathon) sponsored since 1997, and the bank’s sponsorship since 2010 of Liverpool, a football club beloved by many Hongkongers.
Hong Kong’s Oldest Surviving
Note-Issuing Bank
What Is 渣打?
「渣打」 (za da) is most likely a transliteration of “Chartered” — and a Hong Kong Cantonese one at that. It rolls easily off the tongue for Cantonese speakers, but read aloud in Mandarin it is quite a mouthful, and since the characters carry no surface meaning, more than a few mainland internet posts have judged the name inelegant.
The bank’s English name, Chartered Bank, derives from its British founder James Wilson, who in 1853 was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria. With Britain’s overseas trade then booming, the Chartered Bank soon opened branches in India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere.
Later, in 1911, the bank’s earlier Chinese name 「匯理」 was changed to 「渣打」, with the short English name Chartered Bank — hence 渣打銀行, the bank’s Chinese name in Hong Kong.
Today, however, the bank’s English name is Standard Chartered: in 1969 it merged with the Standard Bank of British South Africa, whose business centred on Africa, to form a trade-focused bank spanning Europe, Asia and Africa.
India · Australia · China
Standard Chartered was not founded in Hong Kong: it was established in 1853 with its head office in London, and came to Hong Kong to open a branch in 1859.
Over a century ago, the bank’s main business was trade with India, Australia and China, and so it was once named The Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China — rendered in Chinese as 「印度新金山中國匯理銀行」. Only in 1956 were the words 「印度新金山中國」 (“India, New Gold Mountain, China”) dropped.
新金山 — “New Gold Mountain” — was what Chinese people of the day called Australia, after gold was discovered in 1851 in Victoria, the state where Melbourne lies, setting off a new gold rush.
Today, Hong Kong accounts for only about a quarter of the group’s revenue, with business still spanning Britain, the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
Close to Hong Kong, Yet Distant?
Although Standard Chartered’s history in Hong Kong is longer than HSBC’s, it has never held the place of “the Hong Kong people’s bank” in local hearts the way HSBC has.
Standard Chartered is indeed one of Hong Kong’s three note-issuing banks, but the value of its notes in circulation is only about one-sixth of HSBC’s and one-third of Bank of China’s. Its head office is in London, where its shares are listed. Standard Chartered is also listed in Hong Kong, but in earlier years its retail-investor following fell far short of HSBC’s; its largest shareholder today is Temasek, owned by the Singapore government, and the bank relies on Singapore to develop emerging-market business in South-east Asian countries.
HSBC was founded in Hong Kong, and many Hong Kong people know the HSBC main building — an image HSBC deliberately cultivates. By contrast, Standard Chartered Bank Building, the bank’s Hong Kong head-office address, appears on its banknotes but was in fact sold to Hang Lung Group in 1992. Standard Chartered’s website marks no Hong Kong “main office”; every outlet is simply called a branch.
The Marathon and Liverpool
Standard Chartered has sponsored the Hong Kong Marathon since 1997. Over the years the field has grown ever larger, and the race has come to be known as the “Standard Chartered Marathon” or “Za Ma” (渣馬) for short, setting it apart from other marathons. In recent years it has drawn more than seventy thousand entrants annually, making it one of Hong Kong’s major sporting events.
From 2010, Standard Chartered began sponsoring Liverpool, the English Premier League club with a huge Hong Kong following, and its logo appears on the Liverpool shirt. Hong Kong never saw a Standard Chartered Liverpool credit card like those launched in South-east Asian markets, but when Liverpool won the league title in the 2019/20 season — their first in 30 years — the bank held a signed-shirt giveaway.
Donald Duck Money Boxes
Standard Chartered’s cultural bond with Hong Kong may rest in large part on Donald Duck, of America’s Disney. Historical material on Standard Chartered in Hong Kong is truly nowhere near as rich as HSBC’s, but type 「渣打唐老鴨」 (“Standard Chartered Donald Duck”) into a search engine and results pour out.
Standard Chartered’s partnership with Disney dates back to the 1960s, when banks generally promoted the educational message of “cultivating the savings habit”. Aiming at children, the bank launched a series of Disney money boxes — 錢罌 (chin aang) in Cantonese — including the classic Donald Duck. The Donald Duck money box likely became a memory for many Hongkongers, and a reissued edition in 2018 stirred a round of discussion. Many children of that era may have learned to save with a Donald Duck passbook; whether the Disney deposit cards launched in recent years can serve the same educational purpose remains to be seen.
The oldest note-issuing bank still in existence
Standard Chartered was Hong Kong’s fourth note-issuing bank, but the three before it have all closed or been acquired. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority runs an Information Centre whose permanent exhibition covers the history of Hong Kong’s currency, note issuance and note-issuing banks. Anyone keen to learn more, or to see more old Standard Chartered banknotes, can pay it a visit.
HKMA Information Centre
Location: 55/F, Two International Finance Centre, Central
Opening hours: Monday to Friday 10:00 am to 5:30 pm, and Saturday 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. To manage visitor numbers, admission is by timed session (three hours each*) with entry quotas. Closed on Sundays and public holidays.
Visitors are admitted on a first-come, first-served basis.
Enquiries: 2878 1111
Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/standardcharteredhk/
https://av.sc.com/hk/zh/content/docs/hk-c-1-annual-report-2019.pdf
https://www.hkma.gov.hk/media/chi/publications-and-research/annual-report/2019/AR2019_C.pdf
https://www.hkma.gov.hk/chi/about-us/the-hkma-information-centre/
HKMA Information Centre exhibition gallery
Published in Oct 2020 by Hong Kong Brand Museum 香港品牌博物館