1785 - 10th May 1863
The son of a Greenock merchant, the tall and "somewhat ungainly" Anderson traded as a manufacturer before managing the Glasgow Union Banking Company. His main achievement was the absorption of private banks into the Union Bank of Scotland, starting with the Thistle Bank of Glasgow in 1836 and including the Paisley Union Bank (1838) and the Aberdeen Bank (1849). These mergers required delicate negotiations, for which Anderson, with his reputation for integrity and honour, was well suited.
He was often consulted on monetary matters by Sir Robert Peel, and in 1841 gave evidence to a Commons Select Committee. He was chairman of the Unchartered Banks of Scotland, 1844-45, and a member of Glasgow Town Council. He also served as a magistrate, as president of Anderson's University (founded by his uncle, Professor John Anderson), and as secretary to the Chamber of Commerce.
He died at Carlung, Ayrshire, on 10 May 1863.
"MUCH has been said and written about the Scottish Banks and their peculiar system, and inquiries have come from all parts of the world as to wherein lay the origin and secret of their strength. The answer to such inquiries is in the simple fact that, unlike their neighbours in England and elsewhere, the people of Scotland were left free by the Legislature to create a system of banking suitable to their wants. Before the days of railways and steamboats each district, by a process of "natural selection," had its banker. He was the trusted custodian of the savings of the thrifty. He was the discreet and sagacious supporter of the enterprising trader and adventurous man of commerce. His promises to pay gold on demand were freely accepted within the circuit of his district as a convenient and necessary medium of exchange. In this way there grew up throughout the country substantial private copartneries conducting the business of banking and serving the important purpose of promoting industry and thrift. The currency doctor had not yet been born, and the subtle suggestion had not yet been made that a one-pound note, convertible into gold on demand, might, unknown to its possessor, be of less value than the coin it represented.
"But the range of banking credit of these substantial copartneries was naturally limited to the districts where they respectively were known, and with increased facilities of communication and transit, and the rapid development of commercial enterprise, it by-and-by became evident that banking institutions of more commanding importance and more widely-recognized stability were required to take the place of the old local private banks. The three "old banks," with their headquarters in Edinburgh, had not yet seriously set themselves to serve the country districts, and the two new joint-stock banks which had been started there were comparatively in their infancy, when, in 1830, an energetic movement was begun in Glasgow to institute a joint-stock bank. It is not "sixty years since," and yet this apparently laudable proceeding provoked at that time the enmity and opposition of the "old banks" and private bankers to an extent which is now almost incredible. With great difficulty a law-agent was found sufficiently audacious to draw the bank's contract of copartnery, and when this had been accomplished and the bank had surmounted the dangers incidental to its birth, the directors were most fortunate in placing the young institution under the guidance of a gentleman of exceptional sagacity and experience, Mr. James Andrew Anderson.
"Mr. Anderson was then forty-five years of age. He was the son of Mr. Andrew Anderson, of Greenock, a much-respected merchant there, and was nephew of the celebrated Professor John Anderson, founder of Anderson's University, so he came of an excellent west country stock. Mr. Anderson had been bred to business in the counting-house of Mr. Dugald Bannatyne, and for fifteen years had traded successfully as a manufacturer. At the time he was selected for the important office of manager of the Glasgow Union Banking Company, as the bank at first was called, he ha