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national bank

 
Dictionary: national bank

n.
  1. A bank in a system of federally chartered privately owned banks in the United States, each required by law to be an investing member of its district Federal Reserve Bank and insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
  2. A bank associated with national finances and usually owned or controlled by a government.

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In the U.S., any commercial bank chartered and supervised by the federal government and operated by private individuals. National banks were created during the Civil War under the National Bank Act of 1863 to combat financial instability caused by state banks and to help finance the war effort. When these banks purchased federal bonds and deposited them with the comptroller of the currency, they were permitted to circulate national bank notes, thereby creating a stable, uniform national currency. After the Civil War, the government began to retire the bonds issued during the war, which reduced the number of national bank notes that could be issued. Concern over the inflexibility of national bank notes led to the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, which all national banks were required to join. The U.S. Treasury assumed the obligation of issuing national bank notes in 1935, effectively ending the issue of money by private commercial banks.

For more information on national bank, visit Britannica.com.

Hoover's Profile: National Bank of Canada
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(Pink Sheets:NTIOF) (Toronto:NA)
Contact Information
National Bank of Canada
National Bank Tower, 600 de la Gauchetière West
Montreal, Quebec H3B 4L2, Canada
Tel. 514-394-5000
Fax 514-394-6196

Type: Public
On the web: http://www.nbc.ca
Employees: 17,146
Employee growth: 1.7%

What's the bank for the Quebecois? The National Bank of Canada says, "C'est moi!" The bank offers personal and commercial banking services through about 450 branches in Canada, primarily in Quebec. The company's offerings include deposits and loans, credit cards, and insurance. Through some 85 locations, its National Bank Financial subsidiary offers financial advisory, brokerage services, and mutual funds. The unit manages more than $50 billion of client assets. It performs investment banking services, such as mergers and acquisitions advice, as well as corporate finance.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending October, 2008:
Sales: $3,007.8M
One year growth: (16.1%)
Net income: $641.8M
Income growth: 17.8%

Officers:
Chairman: Jean Douville
President, CEO, and Director: Louis Vachon
EVP Finance, Risk, and Treasury and CFO: Patricia Curadeau-Grou

Competitors:
BMO Financial Group
CIBC
RBC Financial Group

Banking Dictionary: National Bank
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Commercial bank chartered by the Comptroller of the Currency an agency of the U.S. Treasury Department. A national bank is supervised by the Comptroller and is a Member Bank in the Federal Reserve System.

National banks originally came into existence in the 1860s under the National Bank Acts of 1863 and 1864 when the federal government, lacking a uniform national currency, approved the chartering of banks that would issue their own notes (national bank notes) backed by U.S. Government bonds, and imposed a 10% tax on bank notes of state chartered banks. (In response to the new federal tax, state chartered banks persuaded their depositors to begin writing checks instead of taking out their money in cash. This practice led to paying bills by check, and the check payment system as we know it today.) National bank notes have been retired from circulation since 1935.

About 30% of U.S. Commercial banks have national charters, but national banks have economic power beyond what the numbers indicate, holding more than two-thirds of the total deposits in federally insured commercial banks. National banks are authorized by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 to engage in any activity determined by the Federal Reserve Board to be financial in nature or related to a financial activity, subject to the approval of the Federal Reserve Board. Insurance underwriting, merchant banking and real estate development are, however, specifically excluded. In 2004, five years after enactment of the modernization law, the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury may jointly allow national bank subsidiaries to offer Merchant Banking services for corporate clients. These expanded powers are authorized in the new section 4(k)4 of the Bank Holding Company Act. See also Dual Banking.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: national bank
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national bank, in the United States, financial institution of a class authorized by Congress in acts of 1863 and 1864. The acts were intended to provide a way of marketing the large bond issues made necessary by the Civil War and to give circulation to a paper currency more trustworthy than the notes of state banks had proved to be. The act of 1864 authorized the formation of private banking corporations that were to invest a large part of their capital in bonds of the United States and that might then issue their notes as currency. The amount of the notes was not to exceed 90% of either the face value or the par value of the bonds, depending on which of the two was smaller. Subsequent acts modified the act of 1864 in various details, and the plan was changed fundamentally by the Federal Reserve Act of Dec. 23, 1913, which provided for the gradual substitution of Federal Reserve notes and Federal Reserve bank notes for national bank notes. The Federal Reserve Act also required all national banks to become members of the Federal Reserve System.

Bibliography

See bibliography under banking.


Wikipedia: National bank
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The term national bank has several meanings:

  • especially in developing countries, a bank owned by the state
  • an ordinary private bank which operates nationally (as opposed to regionally or locally or even internationally)
  • in the United States, an ordinary private bank operating within a specific regulatory structure, which may or may not operate nationally.

In the past, the term "national bank" has been used synonymously with "central bank", but it is no longer used in this sense today. Some central banks may have the words "National Bank" in their name; conversely if a bank is named in this way, it is not automatically considered a central bank. For example, National-Bank AG in Essen, Germany is a privately owned commercial bank, just like National Bank of Canada of Montreal, Canada. On the other side, National Bank of Ethiopia is the central bank of Ethiopia and National Bank of Cambodia is the central bank of Cambodia.

Contents

Afghanistan

Pashtany Bank is the government-owned bank in based in Kabul, Afghanistan that controls Ariana Afghan Airlines as well as the Afghan National Bank.

Australia

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia was founded by an Australian Act of Parliament in 1911. Bank Nationalisation was the policy of the Andrew Fisher Labor Government. In a rare move for the time, the bank was to have both savings and general bank business. The bank was also the first bank in Australia to receive a Federal Government guarantee.

In 1958 and 1959, there was a controversy concerning the dual function of the bank as the central bank on the one hand and a general bank on the other. As a result of this, the bank was split, giving the reserve bank function to the Reserve Bank of Australia and the general bank function to the Commonwealth Banking Corporation.

The Commonwealth bank was privatised in the 1990s by the Keating Labor government. At present it is the second largest bank in Australia, after the National Australia Bank which has always been privately owned.

Canada

For Canada's central bank see Bank of Canada. The National Bank of Canada is a privately owned bank unrelated to the central bank.

Colombia

The national bank in Colombia is the Bank of the Republic. Its primary role is to control the flow of money inside and outside the country and to issue the Colombian currency, the peso.

India

The National Bank for Rural and Agricultural Development (NABARD) was established on 12 July 1982 to implement the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development Act 1981.

It replaced the Agricultural Credit Department (ACD) and Rural Planning and Credit Cell (RPCC) of the Reserve Bank of India, and the Agricultural Refinance and Development Corporation (ARDC).

Activities

  • 1. serving as an apex financing agency for the institutions providing investment and production credit for promoting the various developmental activities in rural areas;
  • 2. taking measures towards institution building for improving absorptive capacity of the credit delivery system, including monitoring, formulation of rehabilitation schemes, restructuring of credit institutions, training of personnel, etc.;
  • 3. co-ordinating the rural financing activities of all institutions engaged in developmental work at the field level and maintains liaison with Government of India, State Governments, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other national level institutions concerned with policy formulation; and
  • 4. undertaking monitoring and evaluation of projects refinanced by it.

NABARD’s refinance is available to State Co-operative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (SCARDBs), State Co-operative Banks (SCBs), Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), Commercial Banks (CBs) and other financial institutions approved by RBI.

While the ultimate beneficiaries of investment credit can be individuals, partnership concerns, companies, State-owned corporations or co-operative societies, production credit is generally given to individuals.

NABARD operates throughout the country through its 28 Regional Offices and one Sub-office, located in the capitals of all the states/union territories. It has 336 District Offices across the country, one Sub-office at Port Blair and one special Cell at Srinagar. It also has 6 training establishments.

New Zealand

State-owned banks

New Zealand currently has one state-owned bank, Kiwibank.

The New Zealand government formerly owned two other banks in New Zealand: The Bank of New Zealand, from 1945 to 1992 when it was privatised and sold, and Post Office Savings Bank, which was created as a separate entity with the privatisation of New Zealand Post. PostBank was sold to ANZ New Zealand in 1989.

National Bank of New Zealand

The National Bank of New Zealand is a private bank corporation which has been purchased by ANZ 2003 from its former owner, Lloyds TSB.

Pakistan

National Bank of Pakistan is a major bank in Pakistan.

Serbia

National Bank of Serbia is the state-owned central bank in Serbia which regulates the currency Serbian dinar.

United States

In the United States, the term "national bank" originally referred to the revolutionary era Bank of North America, later, First Bank of the United States, or its successor the Second Bank of the United States. All are now defunct.

In the modern U.S. the term "national bank" has a precise meaning: a banking institution chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC"), an agency in the U.S. Treasury Department, pursuant to the National Bank Act. The inclusion of the word "National" in the bank's name or the designation "National Association" or its abbreviation "N.A." is a required part of the distinguishing legal title of a national bank, as in "Citibank, N.A." Many "state banks", by contrast, are chartered by the applicable state government (usually the state's department of banking). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), insures all deposits may it be into a national bank or state bank.

Notwithstanding the name, not all "national banks" have nationwide operations. Some "national banks" have operations in only one city, or county or state. "National banks" should also be distinguished from federal savings associations (which include federal savings and loans, and federal savings banks), which are financial institutions chartered by the Office of Thrift Supervision, another agency in the U.S. Treasury Department. The Federal Reserve is the United States central bank.

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Hoover's Profile. ©2008 Hoover's, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Banking Dictionary. Dictionary of Banking Terms. Copyright © 2006 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "National bank" Read more