Banking - Ghana and Biafra to Bermuda

A Dozen Countries in Fifty Years

by Calum Johnston

Calum Johnston commenced his banking career in Scotland, at the age of seventeen, at a time when the duties of a ‘boy’ in the bank included sweeping the floor and mixing the powder to make ink for the counter ink wells. In this volume he recounts banking practices long since forgotten. Remarkably, the author became a bank manager in the Gold Coast at the age of twenty-one. After moving to Nigeria he experienced the Biafra civil war during which he was arrested at gun point and interrogated more than once, having previously evacuated his family and other bank wives and children to the safety of Lagos.

After joining a Canadian bank, the author worked on Wall Street, established the bank’s first office in Hong Kong, managed branches in Malaysia and Jamaica and was responsible for lending throughout the Caribbean and Canada. For eleven years he was responsible for his bank’s operations in over forty countries. After retiring Johnston was appointed President and CEO of a bank in Bermuda where he and his team produced outstanding results. He finished his working life in St. Maarten in the Caribbean

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