ABSTRACT
The decision of the East India Company in August 1853 that Royal Charters of Incorporation could be granted to other banks - conferring upon them the same powers as those already granted to the Oriental Bank Corporation1 - opened the way for new banks with the privileges and advantages of a charter to operate in the territories under the jurisdiction of the East India Company and elsewhere. However, there was still a simpler and speedier way of forming a company to carry on the business of banking in India and elsewhere in the East by merely establishing a co partnership of shareholders for this purpose, without the benefit of limited liability. This was the result in the first week of October 1853, after Cowasjee Nanabhoy called on his friend and business colleague, Edwin Heycock, and stated his reasons for believing there was room for another bank in Bombay. As Edwin Heycock put it five years later, ‘I took a day to consider the subject, and on the next an advertisement was issued which led to the formation of the Bank’.2
