Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

4 Foundations of modern banking and currency arrangements During the early decades of the 1900s, other foreign commercial banks broke the monopoly held by the Colonial Bank in Barbados. The Royal Bank of Canada established a branch in 1911, followed by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in 1920. 5 At the same time, the Colonial Bank was being viewed with some interest by Barclays Bank Ltd., another UK entity that wanted to establish a working relationship with a bank that was already operating overseas. In March 1918, Barclays made its first investment in the Colonial Bank by subscribing for 5,000 ordinary shares at £20 each. Through a merger with Barclays Bank, the Anglo-Egyptian Bank and the National Bank of South Africa, the Colonial Bank was assimilated into a new institution called Barclays Bank, Dominion, Colonial and Overseas (Barclays Bank, DCO) in 1925. As a result of these developments, by the 1940s UK coin, the currency notes of Barbados, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as bank notes issued by Barclays Bank, DCO, and the Canadian commercial banks, were legal tender in Barbados. By now there was renewed interest in the UK in providing centrally-organised currency arrangements. For one, the cost of withdrawing UK coin from circulation was no longer seen as an obstacle. A meeting was convened in Trinidad and Tobago in 1944 to discuss the 1923 Ormsby-Gore Report on currency. Next came a full-fledged currency conference in Barbados during May 1946, as a result of which Location of Barclays Bank in Bridgetown.