Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank plc is a British retail and commercial bank with branches across England and Wales. It has traditionally been considered one of the "Big Four" clearing banks. The bank was founded in Birmingham in 1765. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies. In 1995 it merged with the Trustee Savings Bank and traded as Lloyds TSB Bank plc between 1999 and 2013.
Lloyds Bank is the largest retail bank in Britain, and has an extensive network of branches and ATM in England and Wales (as well as an arrangement for its customers to be serviced by Bank of Scotland branches in Scotland, Halifax branches in Northern Ireland and vice versa) and offers 24-hour telephone and online banking services. As of 2012 it has 16 million personal customers and small business accounts. It has its operational Headquarters in London and other offices in Wales and Scotland. It also operates a number of office complexes, brand headquarters and data centres in Yorkshire including Leeds, Sheffield and Halifax.
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 symbol adopted by Taylors and Lloyds was the beehive, representing industry and hard work. The black horse regarding the device dates from 1677, when Humphrey Stokes adopted it as a sign for his shop. Stokes was a goldsmith and "keeper of the running cashes" (an early term for banker) and the business became part of Barnett, Hoares & Co. When Lloyds took over that bank in 1884, it continued to trade "at the sign of the black horse".
