Wales so closed in 1908; since then, although banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland continue to have the right to issue banknotes in their own countries, the Bank of England has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in Wales. The Commercial Bank of Wales, established in Cardiff by Sir Julian Hodge in 1971, was taken over by the Bank of Scotland in 1988 and absorbed into its parent company in 2002. The Royal Mint, who issue the coinage circulated through the whole of the UK, have been based at a single site in Llantrisant since 1980. Since decimalisation, in 1971,
Royal Australian Mint the Order of Australia. The mint produced medals for the 2000 Summer Olympics in conjunction with the Perth Mint. The Royal Australian Mint also produces tokens made for commercial organisations such as casinos, car washes etc. Since its opening, the mint has produced over fourteen billion coins and has the capacity to produce two million coins per day. Coins have also been struck for several Asian and South Pacific nations, including New Zealand (in 1969), Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Western Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Israel, and the Philippines. In November 2001, the mint issued the