Since the appearance of the first edition of this book in 1987, new legislation and practices have caused great changes in banking regulation. New technology has had like effect on the law of banker and customer and the law governing relations between banker and predesignate borrower. However, this edition’s differences from the first derive not just from the rewriting needed to take account of these changes. The revision is intended also to make the book more comprehensible to post-graduate and undergraduate students; for it was, and remains, aimed at them as well as at experienced practitioners. A review of the first edition [1989] LMCLQ 241 commented: “Aiming at such a wide audience must result in a balancing exercise to meet the various needs of the different groups catered for.” Though the authors’ aim is so wide as to necessitate even a chapter on bills of exchange, to which I shall return, I admire the balance and comprehensibility achieved. The following criticisms are accordingly made with the utmost respect. Despite many differences of opinion between the authors and myself, I have only two grave objections to their book; and they are connected. The first is to their concept of the relationship of banker and customer and the breadth consequently allowed to the business of banking; the other is to their concept of the basis of the relationship.

On authority (Foley v. Hill (1848) 2 H.L.C. 28; Joachimson v. Swiss Bank Corp. [1921] 3 K.B. 110; United Dominions Trust v. Kirkwood [1966] 2 Q.B. 431, 462F and 466D) the relationship of banker and customer includes the banker only in the capacity of borrower on a current account, which may casually become overdrawn. In the authors’ view, expressed in para. 8–007, the relationship extends to a banker who lends by prior arrangement. Such disregard of authority tends to confusion. In Re Kent & Sussex Sawmills Ltd [1947] Ch. 177, Wynn-Parry, J.’s intentness on avoiding it appears at 181. He did not follow counsel in referring to “a bank” and “a customer”, but described the parties’ “relations” as those “of borrower and lender”. Avoidance of the confusion is vital because, as the case shows, the identification of the status of every party to a relationship is essential to the interpretation of specific agreements made within it. The identification of that status is essential also to the discovery of the terms implied by law in the contract which founds the relationship; cf. Lister v. Romford Ice & Cold Storage Co. [1957] A.C. 555, 576. The terms so implied in a contract between a banker and his customer differ from those implied between a banker and a predesignate borrower. For instance, the implied right to combine accounts exists in the one (Garnett v. McKewan (1872) L.R. 8 Ex. 10) but not in the other (Re E.J.Morel (1934) Ltd [1962] Ch. 21, 30–31).

Regrettably, the confusion avoided by Wynn-Parry, J., affected the House of Lords in National Westminster Bank v. Halesowen Presswork & Assemblies [1972] A.C. 785. After the opening of the new account there co-existed between the parties, pursuant to the variation of their contract, the relationships of banker and customer as regards that account and of banker and predesignate borrower as regards the old account. With all respect to counsel who conceded, and to the peers who accepted, that the winding-up resolution ended the relationship of banker and customer, this was not

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