This is a study of the emergence, growth, and performance of British multinational banks from their origins in the 1830s until the present day. British-owned banks played leading roles in the financial systems of much of Asia and the southern hemisphere during the nineteenth century and after. In the 1970s and 1980s they made large investments in California and elsewhere in the United States. They played major roles in the finance of international trade, in international diplomacy, in the birth of the Eurodollar market, and in the world debt crisis.