farsons [dot] com Malta’s first privately-owned bank was established in 1840 by Giuseppe Scicluna. In those days the average businessman, as well as the ordinary man in the street, kept his hard-earned cash either in a brass-bound box under his bed or concealed in various leather pouches hidden in his clothes. At most, he would hand it over to a banker to be placed in a vault and to be retrieved slowly as necessity arose. Nothing would have saved him from a fit if, instead of a bag jingling with old coins, his banker had given him a piece of paper calling it ‘cento scudi’. It was only when they realized that they too could play the same trick on their own creditors, that Scicluna’s clients agreed to operate a current account against which they could draw cheques.
It was not long before the semi-literate depositors coming in from country districts, corrupted the word ‘cheques’ into ‘cisk’, and Giuseppe Scicluna himself became known as ‘Ic-Cisk’ (The Cisk).
In 1928, Scicluna’s Bank took over the operations of one of its clients, who was granted a temporary exclusive licence to manufacture beer of the Pilsner and Műnchener type. The new company became known as The Malta Export Brewery and the first lager, ‘Cisk Pilsner’ was launched in 1928.
The Malta Export Brewery eventually merged with Simonds Farsons Limited in 1948. The new company became Simonds Farsons Cisk Limited.
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