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Bank

A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.

As banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords.

Banking in its modern sense evolved in the fourteenth century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but, in many ways, functioned as a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in the ancient world. In the history of banking, a number of banking dynasties – notably, the Medicis, the Pazzi, the Fuggers, the Welsers, the Berenbergs, and the Rothschilds – have played a central role over many centuries. The oldest existing retail bank is Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (founded in 1472), while the oldest existing merchant bank is Berenberg Bank (founded in 1590).

Banking as an archaic activity (or quasi-banking) is thought to have begun as early as the end of the 4th millennium BCE, to the 3rd millennia BCE.

In Europe, the first recorded instances of private banks were run by the Knights Templar. The Knights provided safe passage for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. To avoid being targeted by robbers because of the large sum of money required for the pilgrimage, pilgrims would exchange money in Templar strongholds for a receipt. They could then withdraw the money along the route at other Templar strongholds to purchase necessities. The organization would provide these services from the 12th century until their disbandment in the early 14th century. The present era of banking can be traced to wealthy medieval Renaissance Italian city-states, whose elite families such as the Bardi and Peruzzi dominated banking in 14th-century Florence before establishing branches in many other parts of Europe.[page needed] Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici set up one of the most famous Italian banks, the Medici Bank, in 1397. The Consell de Cent founded the earliest-known state deposit bank, the Taula de canvi de Barcelona (Table of Change), in 1401 at Barcelona. This was followed by The Bank of Saint George, created in 1407 at Genoa, Italy.

Fractional reserve banking and the issue of banknotes emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries. Merchants started to store their gold with the goldsmiths of London, who possessed private vaults, and who charged a fee for that service. In exchange for each deposit of precious metal, the goldsmiths issued receipts certifying the quantity and purity of the metal they held as a bailee; these receipts could not be assigned, only the original depositor could collect the stored goods.

Gradually the goldsmiths began to lend money out on behalf of the depositor, and promissory notes, which evolved into banknotes, were issued for money deposited as a loan to the goldsmith. Thus, by the 19th century, we find in ordinary cases of deposits, of money with banking corporations, or bankers, the transaction amounts to a mere loan, or mutuum, and the bank is to restore, not the same money, but an equivalent sum, whenever it is demanded and money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal (see Parker v. Marchant, 1 Phillips 360); it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to return an equivalent, by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him, when he is asked for it. The goldsmith paid interest on deposits. Since the promissory notes were payable on demand, and the advances (loans) to the goldsmith's customers were repayable over a longer time-period, this was an early form of fractional reserve banking. The promissory notes developed into an assignable instrument which could circulate as a safe and convenient form of money backed by the goldsmith's promise to pay, allowing goldsmiths to advance loans with little risk of default. Thus the goldsmiths of London became the forerunners of banking by creating new money based on credit.

The Bank of England originated the permanent issue of banknotes in 1695. The Royal Bank of Scotland established the first overdraft facility in 1728. By the beginning of the 19th century, Lubbock's Bank had established a bankers' clearing house in London to allow multiple banks to clear transactions. The Rothschilds pioneered international finance on a large scale, financing the purchase of shares in the Suez canal for the British government in 1875.[need quotation to verify]

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