The story
The bank was established in Malawi on 15 March 1969, as Commercial Bank of Malawi. The founding shareholders were (a) the government of Malawi (b) Press Holdings Limited and (c) Banco Pinto & Sotto Mayor. By the mid 1980s, the bank became a wholly Malawian enterprise, with shareholders being (a) Malawian Development Corporation (20 percent) (b) Press Holdings (40 percent) (c) Government of Malawi (30 percent) and (d) Admarc (10 percent). In 1998, the government of Malawi sold its 30 percent shareholding by floating the bank's stock on the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE).
In 2001, Standard Bank, a large South African financial services conglomerate, acquired 60 percent shareholding in Commercial Bank of Malawi (CBM). Initially the name of the bank changed to Stanbic Bank Malawi and on 1 June 2007 to Standard Bank Malawi.
In 2023, the bank funded the poet Phindu Zaie Banda to perform her poem NTHOWA as part of an advertising campaign highlighting Malawi's progress and investment. and on the 60th anniversary of Independence in 2024, Banda was among four poets the bank had performing live via Facebook. The other three were Q Malewezi, Nyamalikiti Nthiwatiwa and Wanga.
From Wikipedia’s article on Standard Bank Malawi, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3