Alexander Allan Shand
Alexander Allan Shand was a British banker most known for his work in the development of accountacy and early proposal of a central bank in the Japanese banking system during the Meiji era.
Early life
Shand was born in the Scottish town of Turriff to James Shand the surgeon, and Margaret Allan. Shand began work first in a Scottish bank in 1859, moving to London to the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, which obliged him to move to Hong Kong in 1863.Career
Japanese ministry of finance
In 1864 he was promoted to a managerial position and moved again to Yokohama where he also hired Takahashi Korekiyo as an assistant. In August 1872 he was given a position as an Oyatoi in the Japanese Ministry of Finance as a financial advisor, where aspects such as Double-entry bookkeeping were incorporated into the 1872 National Bank Act, which became important later on for Japanese commercial and industrial operations. Here his work Ginkobokiseiho or Detailed Accounts of Bank Book-Keeping was translated in Japanese and published in 1873, which was an important early work in introducing Western Accounting techniques. These techniques were employed early on by the Dai-Ichi Bank and were taught to Eiichi Shibusawa.Introducing British accounting to Japan
By 1874, Shand created a public financial course under the Finance Ministry which educated 341 students between 1874 and 1879, with one third of these going on to work in the Ministry, local government or in Japanese banks, heavily influencing how Japanese accountancy; based on the British model; was taught during Japan's period becoming an industrialized nation, being translated by Joseph Heco who also acted as Shand's interpreter.In late 1874, Shand also conducted the first western style accounting audit inspection at the failed banking business of the Ono house, a wealthy Omi merchant entrepreneur who went bankrupt, in which he advised the creation of a Japanese central bank, which was formed a decade later. Shand would go on to teach clerks at the newly formed Central Bank. Shand later published Ginkotaii, a manual on national banks; which circulated from 1877 to 1878 in the magazine Ginkozasshi. In 1877 Shand would return to London to work with Alliance Bank which merged to form Parr's Bank in 1892 as manager of its London Lombard and Bartholomew Lane branches, due to the death of his Japanese sponsor Kido Takayoshi.