Tamilnad Mercantile Bank
Indian private sector bank
Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Limited (TMB), headquartered in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, is one of India's oldest private sectore bank. Founded in 1921, the bank was originally established under a different name and was renamed Tamilnad Mercantile Bank in November 1962.
History
The history of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank dates back to 1921. The idea to establish a bank for the business community was first proposed at the annual meeting of the Mahajana Sangam held at Thoothukudi in 1920.
The bank was originally registered on 11 May 1921, as The Bank Limited, under the Indian Companies Act, 1913. M. V. Shanmugavel was elected as the first chairman on 4 November 1921. The bank was opened to the public by T. V. Balagurusamy on 11 November 1921 in Ana Mavanna Building at South Raja Street, Thoothukudi.
In 1937, the Bank opened a branch in Sri Lanka, but by 1939 it had closed it.
By 1947, the bank had only four branches: Thoothukudi, Madurai, Sivakasi and Virudhunagar. The bank opened its first Indian branch outside the state of Tamil Nadu in 1976 at Bengaluru.
“Tamilnad Mercantile Bank” enters the record as indian private sector bank. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tamilnad, Mercantile and Bank can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2044991. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1962, 1920 and 1913.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tamilnad Mercantile Bank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.