Westpac

History

In 1982 Westpac Banking Corporation was formed by the merger of the Bank of New South Wales and the Commercial Bank of Australia. The new name, Westpac, was a portmanteau reflecting its mission of becoming a significant Western Pacific bank. The brand name incorporated the "W" that had been the logo of the Bank of New South Wales. Subsequent significant events:

1984: The original agreement between BNSW and the government in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands expired and Westpac and the government of Kiribati formed the Bank of Kiribati as a 51–49% joint venture. Bank of Kiribati also fulfilled the functions of a reserve or central bank.

1985: Westpac replaced Barclays in the National Bank of Tuvalu (est. 1981) in Tuvalu (ex-Ellice Islands), taking 40% of the shares as well as a 10-year management contract.

1988: the firm acquired the European Pacific Banking Corporation in the Cook Islands and a HSBC subsidiary, the Solomon Islands Banking Corporation, which HSBC had established as a branch in 1973. Westpac also acquired HSBC's operations in Fiji and the New Hebrides, and established a branch in Niue that is the only bank in that country. (HSBC had established its branch in Fiji only some 18 months earlier).

1990: Bank of New Zealand sold half its shares in Bank of Tonga to Westpac and half to Bank of Hawaii, giving each of them 30%. Westpac bought Banque Indosuez's operations in New Caledonia and Tahiti. (Banque de l'Indochine, which later merged into Banque Indosuez, had established itself in New Caledonia in 1888 and in Papeete, Tahiti in 1905. In both places l'Indochine functioned as the bank of issue until 1966–1967.)