'Financial royal family's' Bank of Adelaide, with origins in 1865, forced into selloff in 1979

The Bank of Adelaide had branches throughout the state, such as this early one at Swan Reach.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

In the 1970s, South Australian premier Don Dunstan claimed that a “financial royal family” ran the state. That “family” was the directors of the Bank of Adelaide, SA Brewing and The Advertiser newspaper.

By 1979, one of those three pillars, the Bank of Adelaide, dating back to 1865, had collapsed. 

Yet, in the early 1970s, the Bank of Adelaide was picking up on the pace of interstate expansion it had started after World War I. Sydney (1919) was the bank’s first branch in an interstate network, followed by Melbourne (1920), Perth (1922), and Brisbane (1927).

Its corporate strength improved dramatically. The savings bank business, started in 1962, expanded solidly, increasing market share. The Bank of Adelaide with the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) and the Colonial Sugar Refining were the few Australian companies that had always paid a dividend to shareholders.

In 1969, the Bank of Adelaide bought the whole shareholding of Finance Corporation of Australia to increase its flexibility. The bank also was a leader in computer banking by forming Adelaide Group Data.

Dandenong (1963) and Hobart (1970) were later interstate additions and the move into the Australian Capital Territory was successful with the Canberra City (1968), Woden (1975) and Belconnen (1977) branches.

Townsville branch followed in 1978 – the year the bank discovered that its subsidiary Finance Corporation of Australia had run up a fatal level of bad debts.

In September 1979, at an extraordinary and angry meeting of bank shareholders at Adelaide Town Hall, board chairman Arthur Rymill successfully urged them to accept a takeover by the ANZ Bank.

• The Bank of Adelaide is not to be confused with the more recent Adelaide Bank that merged with Bendigo Bank.