The Wallace brothers were the six sons of Edinburgh architect Lewis Wallace. In varying combinations, the brothers established themselves as one of the leading nineteenth century East India merchants, trading in cotton, tea, coffee and other commodities. Through their investments in Burma, they became the world's leading exporter of teak. The rise of independent governments after World War II meant the progressive loss of the family's Eastern assets and the redeployment of capital back to London. This capital was used in the 1960s to establish Wallace Brothers as a banking house but this strategy did not long survive the secondary banking crisis of 1973-75.