Anglo-South American Bank

A partnership led by John Thomas North, a prominent British investor, became interested in Chile’s expanding nitrate industry, and founded the Bank of Tarapacá and London in 1888; Chile had annexed the Peruvian Province of Tarapacá in 1883, at the conclusion of the War of the Pacific.

A part of the vast financial network supporting the British Empire, it was an overseas bank with its head office in London, and the bulk of its operations abroad.

Its landmark Argentine headquarters, in the heart of the Buenos Aires financial district, was designed by British architects Paul Bell Chambers and Louis Newbery Thomas in 1912.

World War I hurt the Commercial Bank, leading many of its shareholders to sell a majority of the shares to the Anglo-South American.

With the acquisition, the Bank now controlled branches in Argentina (in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, and Bahía Blanca), Bolivia, Central America, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s the development of synthetic nitrates and the Great Depression harmed business for the Anglo-South American.