Crossing Continents

For almost a hundred years from the 1860s, the City of London's overseas banks financed the global trade that lay at the core of the British Empire. Foremost among them from the beginning were two start-up ventures: the Standard Bank of South Africa, which soon developed a powerful domestic franchise at the Cape, and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China.

Merged in 1970 as Standard Chartered, the modern Group has weathered countless storms, including the City's Big Bang and the Great Crash of 2008. A breakneck rate of growth in this century has tracked the resurgence of China and the Asian marketplace where Chartered Bank had once thrived.

Crossing Continents recounts Standard Chartered's story with a wealth of detail from one of the richest archives available to any commercial bank. The book also affords a rare and compelling perspective on the evolution of international trade and finance, showing how Britain's commercial influence