The story
Founded by Lala Lajpat Rai on May 19, 1894.1
Punjab National Bank is a Public Sector Undertakings in India (PSU) working under the Government of India regulated by the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 and the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. It was registered on 19 May 1894 under the Indian Companies Act, with its office in Anarkali Bazaar, in pre-independent India (present-day Pakistan). The founding board was drawn from different parts of India professing different faiths and of varying backgrounds, with the common objective of creating a truly national bank that would further the economic interest of the country. PNB's founders included several leaders of the Swadeshi movement such as, Dyal Singh Majithia and Lala Harkishen Lal, Lala Lalchand, Kali Prosanna Roy, E. C. Jessawala, Prabhu Dayal, Bakshi Jaishi Ram, and Lala Dholan Dass. Lala Lajpat Rai was actively associated with the management of the Bank in its early years. The board first met on 23 May 1894. The bank opened for business on 12 April 1895 in Lahore.
PNB is the first Indian bank to have been started solely with Indian capital that survives to the present, as the earlier Oudh Commercial Bank, which was established in 1881, failed in 1958.
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and the Jalianwala Bagh Committee have held PNB accounts.
Timeline
In 1900, PNB established its first branch in modern-day Lahore, Pakistan. Branches in Karachi and Peshawar followed. The next major event occurred in 1940 when PNB absorbed Bhagwan (or Bhugwan) Dass Bank, which had its head office in Dehra.
After the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, PNB lost its premises in Lahore, but continued to operate in Pakistan. Partition forced PNB to close 92 offices in West Pakistan, one-third of its total number of branches, and which held 40% of the total deposits. PNB still maintained a few caretaker branches. On 31 March 1947, even before Partition, PNB had decided to leave Lahore and transfer its registered office to India; it received permission from the Lahore High Court on 20 June 1947, at which time it established a new head office at Under Hill Road, Civil Lines in New Delhi. Lala Yodh Raj was the Chairman of the Bank.
In 1951, PNB acquired the 39 branches of Bharat Bank (est. 1942). Bharat Bank became Bharat Nidhi Ltd. In 1960, PNB again shifted its head office, this time from Calcutta to Delhi. In 1961, PNB acquired Universal Bank of India, which Ramkrishna Dalmia had established in 1938 in Dalmianagar, Bihar. PNB also amalgamated Indo Commercial Bank (est. 1932 by S. N. N. Sankaralinga Iyer) in a rescue. In 1963, The Burmese revolutionary government nationalised PNB's branch in Rangoon (now Yangon). This became People's Bank No. 7. After the India–Pakistan war of 1965, the government of Pakistan seized all the offices in Pakistan of Indian banks in September 1965. PNB also had one or more branches in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
The government of India (GOI) nationalised PNB and 13 other major commercial banks, on 19 July 1969. In 1976 or 1978, PNB opened a branch in London. some ten years later, in 1986, the Reserve Bank of India required PNB to transfer its London branch to State Bank of India after the branch was involved in a fraud scandal. That same year, 1986, PNB acquired Hindustan Commercial Bank (est. 1943) in a rescue. The acquisition added Hindustan's 142 branches to PNB's network. In 1993, PNB acquired New Bank of India, which the GOI had nationalised in 1980. In 1998 PNB set up a representative office in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
In 2003, PNB took over Nedungadi Bank, the oldest private sector bank in Kerala. At the time of the merger with PNB, Nedungadi Bank's shares had zero value, with the result that its shareholders received no payment for their shares. PNB also opened a representative office in London. In 2004, PNB established a branch in Kabul, Afghanistan, a representative office in Shanghai, and another in Dubai. PNB also established an alliance with Everest Bank in Nepal that permits migrants to transfer funds easily between India and Everest Bank's 12 branches in Nepal. Currently, PNB owns 20% of Everest Bank. Two years later, PNB established PNBIL – Punjab National Bank (International) – in the UK, with two offices, one in London, and one in Southall. Since then it has opened more branches, this time in Leicester, Birmingham, Ilford, Wembley, and Wolverhampton. PNB also opened a branch in Hong Kong. In January 2009, PNB established a representative office in Oslo, Norway. PNB hopes to upgrade this to a branch in due course. In January 2010, PNB established a subsidiary in Bhutan. PNB owns 51% of Druk PNB Bank, which has branches in Thimphu, Phuntsholing, and Wangdue. Local investors own the remaining shares. Then on 1 May, PNB opened its branch in Dubai's financial center. PNB purchased a small minority stake in Kazakhstan-based JSC Danabank established on 20 October 1992 in Pavlodar. Within the year PNB increased its ownership till 84% of what has become JSC (SB) PNB, with its share currently decreased to 49%. The associate in Kazakhstan now called JSC Tengri Bank has branches in Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Karaganda, Pavlodar and Shymkent. September 2011: PNB opened a representative office in Sydney, Australia. December 2012: PNB signed an agreement with US based life Insurance company MetLife to acquire a 30% stake in MetLife's Indian affiliate MetLife India Limited. The company would be renamed PNB MetLife India Limited and PNB would sell MetLife's products in its branches.
Read the full text
Punjab National Bank Fraud Case, 2018
PNB disclosed in February 2018 that it detected fraudulent transactions of up to $1.77 billion.
Nirav Modi, along with his associates and related companies, was accused of organizing a major fraud. In 2018, Interpol issued a Red notice for Modi on charges including criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, cheating, corruption, and money laundering.
In March 2019, British authorities arrested Modi in central London.
Fake Currency Case, 2026
In August 2026, counterfeit Indian currency notes with a face value of Rs. 17.29 crore were recovered from a PNB currency chest in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Following an initial investigation that led to the suspension of three bank officials, the NIA took over the probe in September 2026. The agency arrested the manager of the currency chest along with a contractual driver in connection with the alleged movement and substitution of the counterfeit notes.
From Wikipedia’s article on Punjab National Bank, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5