Sharon Oddie Brown writes:
[...]
In February 1866, the year of Henry’s death, George Edward Noble was nineteen years old, and newly recruited by HSBC. He had started his career at the Shanghai Commercial Bank Corporation of India. It was another of the banks in the region that failed that year. In their case, it was because of over-speculation in Shanghai real estate, and the unauthorized investment of the bank’s funds by the San Francisco Manager in California mining enterprises. Plus ça change when it comes to the most frequent reasons for bank failures. It was a useful heads up for Noble.
He and Thomas Jackson, who had previously worked at the failed Agra and Mastermans Bank, were hired that year along with a handful of other fresh faced recruits.