Origins (1699–1779), Birmingham iron merchant and founder of Lloyds Bank in 1765 The origins of Lloyds Bank date from 1765, when button maker
John Taylor and
Quaker iron producer and dealer
Sampson Lloyd set up a private banking business in Dale End,
Birmingham. The first branch office opened in
Oldbury, some six miles (10 km) west of Birmingham, in 1864. The association with the Taylor family ended in 1852 and, in 1865, Lloyds & Co. converted into a joint-stock company known as Lloyds Banking Company Ltd. The first report of the company in 1865 stated:LLOYDS BANKING COMPANY LIMITED – Authorized Capital £2,000,000. FOUNDED ON The Private Banks of Messrs. Lloyds & Co. and Messrs. Moilliet and Sons, with-which have subsequently been amalgamated with the Banks of Messrs. P. H. Williams, Wednesbury, and Messrs.Stevenson, Salt, & Co., Stafford and Lichfield. [They had an office at 20 Lombard St., London] Your Directors have the satisfaction to report that they have concluded an agreement with the well-known and old-established firm of Messrs. Stevenson, Salt & Company for the amalgamation with this Company of their Banking Business at Stafford, Lichfield, Rugeley, and Eccleshall, and that this agreement has had the unanimous approval of the Extraordinary General Meeting held on 31st January last. It will be again submitted to you for final confirmation after the close of the Ordinary General Meeting. TIMOTHY KENRICK, Chairman. BIRMINGHAM, 9th February 1866Two sons of the original partners followed in their footsteps by joining the established merchant bank Barnett, Hoares & Co. which later became Barnetts, Hoares, Hanbury, and Lloyd— based in Lombard Street, London. Eventually, this became absorbed into the original Lloyds Banking Company, which became Lloyds, Barnetts, and Bosanquets Bank Ltd. in 1884. and, finally, Lloyds Bank Limited in 1889.
Symbols The symbol adopted by Taylors and Lloyds was the beehive, representing industry and hard work (thrift). In 1822, Taylors and Lloyds sent a letter to other banks to inform them of stolen banknotes, adding that it would engrave a symbol of a beehive to all future notes.
Dowler & Sons made brass buttons embellished with beehives for branch messenger uniforms in the 1900s. Uniform buttons featuring a black horse with small beehives engraved around it were manufactured in the 1930s. The black horse regardant device dates from 1677, when Humphrey Stokes adopted it as a sign for his shop. The reason why Stokes chose this horse is unknown, though it may have been a family crest because the black horse is heraldically posed in '
rampant regardant'. The green of the Lloyds Bank was adopted in the 1920s for added distinctiveness. Since 1975, real black horses have been featured in Lloyds' television adverts, including
Cancara. In 2011, the company founded SGH Martineau LLP. Eleven banks bought by Lloyds Bank between 1865 and 1923 had been involved in
slavery to some degree. One of these, the London and Brazilian Bank, financed coffee plantations in
Brazil which operated on
slave labour, and mortgages on these plantations were sometimes secured using the monetary value of the enslaved people as collateral. In 1968, an attempt to merge with
Barclays and
Martins Bank failed because the
Monopolies and Mergers Commission deemed it to be against the public interest. Barclays finally acquired Martins the following year. In 1972, Lloyds Bank was a founding member of the Joint Credit Card Company (with
National Westminster Bank,
Midland Bank and the
National and Commercial Banking Group) which launched the
Access credit card (now
MasterCard). That same year it introduced
Cashpoint, the first online cash machine to use plastic cards with a magnetic stripe. in entering the estate agency market with the acquisition of the Norfolk firm of Charles Hawkins and Son in May of that year to form Black Horse Agencies. The firm had been first established in 1869 in Downham Market by Charles Hawkins who was land agent for the Pratt estate at Ryston. The firm merged in 1875 with that of Cruso and Son forming Cruso and Hawkins, later becoming Charles Hawkins and Son in 1908. Under the leadership of Sir Brian Pitman between 1983 and 1997, the bank became an early adopter of
shareholder value creation as a governing corporate objective. The bank's business focus was narrowed and it reacted to disastrous lending to South American states by trimming its overseas businesses and seeking growth through mergers with other UK banks. During this period, Pitman tried unsuccessfully to acquire
The Royal Bank of Scotland in 1984,
Standard Chartered in 1986, and Midland Bank in 1992. Lloyds Bank International merged into Lloyds Bank in 1986, since there was no longer an advantage in operating separately. In 1988, Lloyds merged five of its businesses with the
Abbey Life Insurance Company to create Lloyds Abbey Life.
Lloyds TSB The bank merged first with the newly demutualised
Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society (C&G), then with the
TSB Group in 1995. The C&G acquisition gave Lloyds a large stake in the UK
mortgage lending market. The TSB merger was structured as a reverse takeover; Lloyds Bank Plc was delisted from the
London Stock Exchange and TSB Group plc was renamed Lloyds TSB Group plc on 28 December, with former Lloyds Bank shareholders owning a 70% equity interest in the share capital, effected through a scheme of arrangement. The new bank commenced trading in 1999 after the statutory process of integration was completed. On 28 June, TSB Bank plc transferred engagements to Lloyds Bank Plc which then changed its name to Lloyds TSB Bank plc; at the same time, TSB Bank Scotland plc absorbed Lloyds' three Scottish branches becoming Lloyds TSB Scotland plc. The combined business formed the largest bank in the UK by market share and the second-largest to Midland Bank (now
HSBC) by market capitalisation. Lloyds' iconic black horse device was retained and modified to reflect the TSB merger. Lloyds Abbey Life became a wholly owned subsidiary of the group in 1996, absorbing
Hill Samuel in 1997, before closing to a new business in 2000. In 2007, Abbey Life was sold to
Deutsche Bank for £977 million. In 1999, the group agreed to buy the
Scottish Widows Fund and Life Assurance Society for £7 billion. The society demutualised in 2000, shortly before the acquisition was completed. In 2001, Lloyds TSB made a bid to acquire
Abbey National; however, the bid was blocked by the
Competition Commission, who ruled that a merger would be against the public interest. In October 2011, Lloyds TSB's credit rating was reduced by
Moody's from Aa3 to A1. The action was taken in the light of a shift in government policy to move risk from taxpayers to creditors by reducing the level of support offered to financial institutions. Lloyds TSB was the first Official Partner for the
2012 Summer Olympics in London.
Divestment and return to Lloyds Bank ,
West Yorkshire (October 2013) After the 2008 rescue of HBOS, Lloyds TSB Group was renamed Lloyds Banking Group. In 2009, following the
liquidity crisis,
HM Government took a 43.4% stake in Lloyds Banking Group. The
European Commission ruled that the group must sell a portion of its business by November 2013, as it categorised the stake purchase as
state aid. On 24 April 2013, it was confirmed that a number of Lloyds TSB branches in England and Wales would be combined with the branches of Cheltenham & Gloucester and the business of Lloyds TSB Scotland to form a new bank operating under the
TSB brand and divested by the group. The selected Lloyds TSB branches and those of Cheltenham & Gloucester were transferred to Lloyds TSB Scotland plc, which was renamed TSB Bank plc. The new bank began operating on 9 September 2013 as a separate division within Lloyds Banking Group. TSB was floated on the London Stock Exchange on 20 June 2014, and was acquired by
Banco Sabadell one year later and subsequently delisted. The remaining business of Lloyds TSB returned to the Lloyds Bank name on 23 September 2013. In October 2014, the bank announced that it planned to cut 9,000 jobs and close some branches in light of an increase in the number of customers using online banking services. In July 2016, the bank announced it would cut 3,000 jobs because of the economic downturn as a result of
United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. On 17 March 2017, the
British Government confirmed its remaining shares in Lloyds Banking Group had been sold. In January 2017, the bank suffered interruptions to its online services originally blamed on "unspecified technical glitches". A
hacker reportedly claimed responsibility for the
attack, demanding around £75,000 from the bank in a "consultation fee". ==Services==