chase bank

The Chase Manhattan Bank, now part of JP Morgan Chase, was formed by the merger of the Chase National Bank and the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1955.

The Bank of the Manhattan Company had been founded in 1799 by Aaron Burr, and Chase National Bank (formed in 1877) was named for former United States Treasury Secretary and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, although Chase never had any connection with the latter entity.

The Chase National Bank was a leading wholesale bank in the 1920's and it acquired a number of smaller banks through its Chase Securities Corporation. Its most significant acquisition though was the Equitable Trust Company of New York in 1930, the largest stockholder of whom was John D. Rockefeller Jr. This made it the largest bank in America and indeed the world.

At the time of the later 1955 merger, Chase National - which members of the Rockefeller family still exercised strong influence over - was led by a family associate and lawyer, John J. McCloy. The merged entity overtook its principal competitor National City Bank of New York, now Citibank, to become again America's largest bank at that time.

As Chase was much the larger bank, it was first intended that Chase acquire the "Bank of Manhattan", as it was nicknamed, but it transpired that Burr's original charter for the Manhattan Company had not only included the clause allowing it (originally a water company) to start a bank with surplus funds, but another requiring unanimous consent of shareholders for the bank to be taken over. Therefore, the deal was structured as an acquisition of Chase National by the Bank of the Manhattan Company, with McCloy becoming chairman of the merged entity.

Under his successor, George Champion, the antiquated 1799 state charter was relinquished for a modern one, and under his later successor, David Rockefeller, the bank became part of a bank holding company, the Chase Manhattan Corporation.

The subsequent merger of The Chase Manhattan Corporation and J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated was completed in December 2000 - the merged company was renamed JP Morgan Chase & Co. (also referred to as JPMorgan Chase). The bank also acquired Bank One in the year 2005 and is now the second largest credit card issuer in the US after Bank of America.

In July 2006, Chase sent letters to consumers advising that data tapes had been lost or misplaced that contained private information regarding their Circuit City accounts. The company offered free one year enrollment in their "Credit Protection" service as compensation for the considerable risk to which their customers had been exposed.

Further reading

• The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-1985, John Donald Wilson, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986.
• Memoirs. David Rockefeller, New York: Random House, 2002.
• The Chairman: John J. McCloy - The Making of the American Establishment, Kai Bird, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
• Don't cash that check! It's a scam: Banks team up with questionable marketers to take your money (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15104735/)

External links

• An Evolutionary View of Internationalization: Chase Manhattan Bank, 1917 to 1996. A Financial Institutions Center study (pdf) completed in 2002.