1. 78 Fox Street, then known as Standard Bank Centre, housed our head office from 1970 to 1990. It was an impressive futuristic skyscraper, the tallest in the Johannesburg CBD at the time, designed by German architect Helmut Hentrich. The famous “Hanging Building” got its nickname from the floors, which were suspended, or hanging, from its central core. At the opening, it was described as positioning the bank as a “forward-looking, national institution” in the public’s mind.
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2. Our first offices were on the second floor of the Guardian Building on Main Road, Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha). Almost immediately upon opening in 1863, we took over the Commercial Bank of Port Elizabeth below – and their offices – and Paterson declared in several newspaper adverts our intention to expand.
3. 30 Baker Street in Rosebank, Johannesburg, was opened in 2013, the same year the building was awarded a five-star Green Star rating by the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA).
4. Our first branch outside South Africa opened in July 1892, in two rooms in Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe). Two years later, our branch in Bulawayo started operations in a small bell tent in the police camp. The tent was behind the town’s first bar, and an armed trooper was provided as a guard until the “branch” could move into a proper brick building a few weeks later. Today, in Zimbabwe and other countries, our brand takes on other forms, including Stanbic Bank, Standard Lesotho Bank, and Stanbic IBTC Bank.
5. We led the way in 1894 as the first commercial bank to open a branch in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), Mozambique. It was situated between the customs shed and the prison. Today, it’s the third largest bank in the country by assets.
