Westminster Bank Westminster Bank Westminster Bank was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1834 until its merger into the National Westminster Bank in 1970; it continued to exist as a dormant registered non-trading company until 4 July 2017 when it was dissolved Considered one of the Big Five, it expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies. In 1834, the London and Westminster Bank was the first firm founded under the auspices of the Bank Charter Act 1833, which allowed joint-stock banks to be established in the capital. For
Proprietary trading The evolution of proprietary trading at banks reached the point where many banks employed multiple traders devoted solely to proprietary trading, with the hopes of earning added profits above that of market-making. These proprietary trading desks were often considered internal hedge funds within the bank, performing in isolation away from client-flow traders. Proprietary desks routinely had the highest value at risk among other trading desks at the bank. At times, investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and the former Merrill Lynch earned a significant portion of their quarterly and annual profits (and losses) through proprietary trading efforts. Regulatory