English reader on

 

Task 5. a) explain the basic idea of banking: a bank attracts different 

deposits of money. 

b) Give the explanation of the meaning of the word: a discount house. 

c) Find non-finite forms of the verbs in the text (Participles, Gerunds 

and Infinitives). 

d) Explain the difference among Participles, Gerunds and Infinitives. 

 

 

 

5

---

TEXT 2 

 

The Commercial Banks 

 

The commercial banks (sometimes referred to as joint stock banks) are 

the banks you see in the high streets of almost every town in the country. The 

biggest and the most well known (called the 'big four') are Lloyds, Midland, 

Barclays and National Westminster banks. These banks have a history which 

goes back to the mid-eighteenth century, when the banking system consisted 

of a large number of small banks looking after money, making loans and even 

issuing their own banknotes. Today, banks like Lloyds are large multinational 

companies with their shares being bought and sold daily on the stock 

exchange. The amount of money they lend runs into millions of pounds. In 

addition to lending money, all the commercial banks have developed a very 

wide range of services for their customers. The banks make a charge for most 

of these services, so they earn an in-come from lending money profitably and 

from providing other services. Out of this income must come the expenses of 

running the bank and its nationwide chain of branches. This reminds us that 

commercial banks are in business to make a profit for their shareholders, 

which means that their income must exceed their expenses. The jobs that a 

commercial bank will undertake for its customers are called its 'functions'. 

There are two functions: the traditional banking functions and the 

professional or special services.