It’s October 1962 and a 23-year-old British man, John Woolfenden, arrives in Abu Dhabi to work for Ottoman Bank, one of three banks newly operating in the capital. Back then the currency was still the Gulf rupee, oil exports and royalties had just started flowing and business was booming.
“The bank had to maintain substantial stocks of new rupee notes [flown in from Bahrain],” Woolfenden remembers in an essay for Liwa (Vol 2, 2010), published by the National Center for Documentation and Research.
“Clients would occasionally come into the office, unannounced, to check that their money was still there.”
Not surprisingly, Ottoman Bank, Eastern Bank and the British Bank of the Middle East raced to offer their services across the emirate.
This photograph shows the Al Ain branch of Eastern Bank in 1963, soon after it opened. The man in his western-style suit and shoes has perhaps just visited his savings.
* Clare Dight
