The bank moved its headquarters from Bombay to London in 1845, and opened branches in Colombo (1843), Calcutta (1844), Shanghai (1845), Canton (1845), Singapore (1846), and Hong Kong (1846).

[5] It was chartered in 1851 to allow competition with the East India Company's opium billing monopoly, which was unpopular in England at the time.

[6] Expansion followed with additional branches opening in Mauritius, Madras (Chennai), Thalassery, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Fuzhou (Foochow), Yokohama, Hiogo (Kobe), and San Francisco.

By the 1860s, the bank held a dominant position in India and China and was considered the “most powerful, oldest, and most prestigious Eastern exchange bank,” and “the doyen of Eastern exchange banking.”[7] From the 1870s, the bank's finances suffered greatly from bad loans to coffee plantations in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and to sugar plantations in Mauritius.

[8] On May 2, 1884, the bank suspended payment[9] and it was subsequently liquidated in a Chancery proceeding.