It competed with the other great British banks of those times, namely - Oriental Bank Corporation, the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank and Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China; involved in trade between India and China and other British possessions, East of suez. By 1860, its total assets reached the amount of US$21.7 million, a medium-sized bank by the standards of that time - a comparison shows that one of the leading Anglo-Indian banks, the Oriental Bank Corporation was about three times larger in terms of total assets. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869; and completion of Indo-European telegraph line