It is a great Birmingham institution and it is 250 today. And no, it is not the King Kong statue.

Taylors & Lloyds, today known as Lloyds Bank, was created in Dale End, Birmingham, on June 3, 1765, and today sits alongside the city's many proud international exports.

The world of banking was changed forever when button and cabinet maker John Taylor and engineer Sampson Lloyd II decided they needed to find a home for their boat-loads of money.

Its famous black horse logo actually pre-dates the pair - it is thought to have originally hung above a goldsmith in London called Humphrey Stokes and was inherited when Taylors & Lloyds took over bank Barnetts, Hoares & Co in 1884.

The first branch office opened in Oldbury in 1864 and a year later Lloyds & Company, the name it adopted in 1852, converted into a joint-stock company known as Lloyds Banking Company. It became simply Lloyds Bank in 1889.

A merger with the TSB Group in 1995 again changed its title, this time to Lloyds TSB, but the 2008/09 collapse put paid to that and Lloyds Bank returned.

Today, for the time being at last, it is part-owned by the taxpayer and, as fate would have it, it also owns a key Birmingham asset after buying the NEC Group from the city council.