JPMorgan Chase & Co.

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JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Founded	2004 as JPMorgan Chase & Co. (Original 1799, See History)
Headquarters	Corp HQ - New York City; Retail financial services - Chicago
Key People	James Dimon, Chairman and CEO
Employees	10,000 +
Products	financial services
LinkedIn	Profile
Website	JPMorgan Chase & Co. Homepage

JP Morgan

Swap Data Regulation - Comment Letter - JP Morgan - January 12, 2011

Dodd-Frank Act - White Paper - J.P.Morgan Cazenove: Regulatory Arbitrage series: OW European over US IBs

Derivatives Clearing Organizations Regulation - Comment Letter - JP Morgan Chase - November 17, 2010

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a global financial services firm that focuses on investment banking, financial services for consumers, small business and commercial banking, financial transaction processing, asset management, and private equity. The common stock is also listed on the London and Tokyo stock exchanges.

Both JPMorgan and Chase are part of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase acquired the banking assets of Washington Mutual on Sept. 25, 2008 after the troubled thrift was seized by federal regulators, marking the biggest bank failure in the nation's history and another stunning twist in the U.S. credit crisis. Under the deal, JPMorgan Chase would acquire all the banking operations of WaMu, including $307 billion in assets and $188 billion in deposits.

On May 1, 2023, JPMorgan Chase acquired most of the assets of First Republic Bank after the FDIC seized it and sold it to JPM to avoid another banking crisis, shortly after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Products and Services

With assets of $1.2 trillion under the JPMorgan, Chase and Bank One brands, its six major businesses are:

Investment Banking

It serves 8,000 clients in more than 50 countries. Clients include corporations, financial institutions, governments and institutional investors.

Retail Financial Services

This sector includes consumer banking, small business banking, auto and education finance, insurance and home finance. With nearly four million accounts, it is the largest U.S. bank originator of auto loans and leases.

Card Services

The company has 94 million cards in circulation and $135 billion in managed loans. It is the second-largest issuer of credit cards in the U.S. and the largest merchant acquirer.

Commercial Banking

JPMorgan Chase has 30,000 middle-market customers, 1,700 corporate banking customers and 1,100 commercial real estate banking customers.

Treasury & Securities Services

The firm provides transaction, investment and information services to support the CFOs, treasurers, issuers and investors worldwide.

Asset & Wealth Management

This sector includes the J.P. Morgan Private Bank and Private Client Services.

• The Private Bank provides investment and wealth management services to institutional, high-net-worth and retail investors and their advisors, and to retirement plan services and brokerage for individual clients.

• Private Client Services provides wealth management solutions and day-to-day service for clients. With combined assets under supervision in excess of $1 trillion, JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest asset and wealth managers in the world.

Physical Commodities

In April 2014 the company sold its physical commodities business to Mercuria for $3.5 billion in an all-cash transaction expected to close in 3Q 2014. The biggest part of the bank's physical business was its crude oil trading operations, followed by North American natural gas and base and precious metals.

The bank had announced in early 2013 that it was exiting the physical commodity trading business because of rising regulatory and political pressure and so it could concentrate on its core business of lending.

JPMorgan said it would still provide traditional banking activities in commodities markets, including financial products and the vaulting and trading of precious metals. In September 2015 the firm said it was quitting open outcry trading on the London Metal Exchange but would continue to trade metals on the electronic platform, LME Select.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

James "Jamie" Dimon, the chairman and CEO of the company, once famously called bitcoin a "fraud" but added that blockchain technology held promise.

Forbes reported in March 2019 that JPMorgan was the only financial firm listed on the job-hunting site Indeed.com in the top ten companies posting jobs including the terms "blockchain," "cryptocurrency," or "bitcoin" over the past year. According to the Forbes story, the main competing firms were IBM, Cisco, Accenture, EY, KPMG, Microsoft, ConsenSys, Conduent, and Deloitte.

In September 2019, JPMorgan. sent out a note to their clients, saying that stablecoins such as Facebook's Libra are potentially prone to gridlock in periods of stress. According to JPM analysts led by Joshua Younger, this is because of the way stablecoins like Libra are currently designed; the note said that stablecoins lack certain microstructures - such as short-term liquidity facilities common in other payments systems - meaning the activity of the coins may grow faster than the coin can support.

JPM Coin

In February 2019 JPMorgan announced that it had created its own cryptocurrency, JPM Coin, a digital token created to improve payment settlements between JPMC clients. This product will not likely be available for retail investors, so it cannot be traded like bitcoin, or similar digital assets. CNBC reported at the time of the announcement that testing for this product would begin "in a few months" from the announcement.

According to an October 27, 2020 report by CNBC, Takis Georgakopoulos, JPMorgan's global head of wholesale payments, said that one of the bank's large technology clients was using JPM Coin commercially for the first time, sending payments around the world. The bank also said that it had established a new business line called "Onyx" with a 100-person dedicated staff, which will let the bank commercialize its blockchain and digital currency developments.

Interbank Information Network

In April 2019, JPMorgan head of global clearing John Hunter said that the bank was "looking at the ability to do more at the point of settlement" with blockchain technology, specifically with the Interbank Information Network (IIN), a blockchain-based digital payments platform set up in partnership with the Australian bank ANZ bank and the Royal Bank of Canada in 2017. were 220 banks included in the IIN at that time. The IIN was useful in particular for correcting mistakes and errors in settlement instructions for interbnk transfers.

While reporting in September 2019 that Deutsche Bank, the world’s biggest clearer of euro denominated payments, had joined the IIN, JPMorgan noted that there were 310 banks signed up to use the service.

In late October 2020, the bank unveiled a new business line, "Onyx," which includes the Interbank Information Network, itself rebranded to "Liink."

Quorum

JPMorgan developed Quorum, a private blockchain written in Ethereum Go (Ethereum's programming language) but which does not run on the public Ethereum blockchain. Quorum was presented by JPMorgan at the annual Sibos conference in 2016. The platform was built in conjunction with EthLab and was made open source. In April 2018, the bank disclosed that it had run a successful debt issuance experiment using Quorum with National Bank of Canada. Other participants in the experiment were Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Pfizer Inc and Legg Mason Inc’s Western Asset as well as other investors in debt instrument.

Quorum is distinguished by several features including network and peer permissions management, enhanced transaction and contract privacy, voting-based consensus mechanisms, and higher transaction-processing performance. JPMorgan told Coindesk in May 2019 that it had developed an extension to a fully decentralized, cryptographic protocol. called Zether, for confidential payments that it is likely to use it with Quorum. Zether uses zero-knowledge proofs which allow one party to prove knowledge of some secret value or information without conveying any details about that secret.

According to the FAQ issued by JPMorgan when it first announced JPM Coin, its cryptocurrency will be issued on Quorum but be available on all other "standard Blockchains."

In a potentially transformative transaction for ConsenSys, the Ethereum-focused software development and consulting firm, the company announced on August 25, 2020 that it had acquired Quorum. The company said it would merge its existing protocol with Quorum, allowing it to choose the best of both protocols. The bank made an investment in ConsenSys of an undisclosed amount at the same time. The company said that JPMorgan will be a customer for the advanced features that are developed.

"Confirm" (blockchain banking software)

In April 2021, JPMorgan said the company was testing a new blockchain software product called "Confirm," which was designed to reduce the number of rejected or returned payments banks typically receive. According to JPMorgan's announcement, Confirm is meant to allow banks to request and receive confirmation of beneficiaries’ account information in near-real time. The announcement also said the company was testing this new product with twelve banks in Taiwan including CTBC Bank, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and First Commercial Bank.

Key People

Jamie Dimon

CEO

History

In 2000, J.P. Morgan & Co. merged with Chase Manhattan Corp., in effect combining four of the largest and oldest money center banking institutions in New York City (J.P. Morgan, Chase, Chemical and Manufacturers Hanover) into one firm called J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

These mergers culminated in July 2004 with the joining of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank One Corporation to form today's JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Today's JP Morgan Chase & Co. is built on the foundation of nearly 1,000 predecessor institutions.

At the beginning of 2011, Chinese regulators approved JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley to form joint ventures and underwrite stock and bond offerings. JP Morgan has teamed up with First Capital Securities and will receive a 33 percent stake in the joint venture.

In 2012, a massive trading bet boomeranged on J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., leaving the bank with at least $2 billion in trading losses and its chief executive, James Dimon, with a rare black eye. The losses stemmed from wagers gone wrong in the bank's chief investment office, which manages risk for the New York company. The Wall Street Journal reported that large positions taken in that office by a trader nicknamed "the London whale" had roiled a sector of the debt markets. The bank ousted Ina Drew, the executive in charge of its Chief Investment Office, which was responsible for taking charge of the bank's overall risks, and for managing approximately $360 billion of securities.

After an investigation into the matter, JPMorgan Chase agreed to a settlement with the SEC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Financial Conduct Authority in London in which the company would admit wrongdoing and pay a fine that could amount to more than $900 million. Only two traders were criminally charged in the case - Javier Martin-Artajo, a bank manager who oversaw the trading strategy, and Julien Grout, a who marked the books. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused them of wire fraud, falsifying bank records and contributing to false regulatory filings.

On October 16, 2013, J.P. Morgan agreed to pay $100 million to settle the CFTC probe into the "London Whale" trading losses and admitted using recklessly manipulative trading strategies when it made giant bets that ultimately cost the bank $6.5 billion.

In November 2013, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $13 billion and admitted making serious misrepresentations involving mortgage-backed securities that were responsible for losses in the 2008 financial crisis. The deal resolved federal and state civil claims related to the packaging, marketing, sale and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities by JPMorgan and WaMu as well as Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan acquired as the financial crisis was heating up.

In January 2015 JPMorgan Chase became the first bank to settle civil lawsuits claiming damages for the alleged manipulation of foreign currency markets, agreeing to pay about $100 million in lawsuits brought by a number of U.S. counterparties and market participants. Eleven other banks were also named in the litigation, including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.

In June 2018 the bank agreed to pay a $65 million civil penalty to settle charges that it attempted to manipulate the ISDAfix benchmark swap rates between 2007 and 2012, according to the U.S. CFTC.

In addition, in September 2020 JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay the U.S. government $920 million in fines and disgorgement to settle spoofing charges in the largest payment ever agreed to by a defendant to settle a futures market manipulation charge. The U.S. Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced the joint settlement with JPMorgan for spoofing in metals futures, U.S. Treasury futures, and the Treasury securities cash market for a period from 2008 to 2016.

Two months later, in November 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $250 million in fines for deficient risk management practices and controls in its asset and wealth management business. The banking company said those failings had been corrected.

Founding Fathers through the Civil War

Today's company traces its beginnings to the Bank of The Manhattan Company, which was founded by Aaron Burr in 1799 and became one of the leading banking institutions in the nation.

• As America expanded and diversified in the 1800s, new banks were formed across the nation. JPMorgan Chase has historic links to many of these early institutions, including the Western Reserve Bank, one of the first banks in Ohio and a predecessor of Bank One, which merged with JPMorgan Chase in 2004. Some states were highly restrictive in granting charters or only gave them to organizers who belonged to the political party in power. Demand for banking services was so great, however, that entrepreneurs sometimes found ways to get around such prohibitions (New York Manufacturing Company manufactured cotton-processing equipment and switched to banking five years later - became forerunner of Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co.; New York Chemical Manufacturing Company began producing medicines, paints and dyes and excess capital in 1824 to open a bank called Chemical Bank).

• In 1853 a group of 52 banks – more than one-quarter of which are heritage institutions of JPMorgan Chase – established the New York Clearing House, the nation’s first such organization. This allowed the banks to settle their accounts at one central location and helped make check-clearing more efficient and less prone to theft and error.

Post Civil War

• In 1977 John Thompson, a 75-year-old Wall Street publisher and banker, named the bank Chase National Bank in honor of his late friend, Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s former Treasury Secretary, Governor of Ohio and Chief Justice of the United States. (By 1930, it was the world’s largest bank with assets of $2.7 billion. In 1955, it merged with The Bank of The Manhattan Company to form Chase Manhattan Bank.)

• The other namesake predecessor, J.P. Morgan & Co., was founded in New York in 1871 as Drexel, Morgan & Co. by J. Pierpont Morgan and Philadelphia banker Anthony Drexel. The new merchant banking partnership served initially as an agent for Europeans investing in the United States. The Morgan firm spearheaded some of the most important transactions of the time and formed many of the large business trusts that dominated key American industries at the beginning of the 20th century. It played a major role in financing the Allied victory during World War I, and with the onset of war in Europe in 1939, J.P. Morgan & Co. was chosen by the British and French governments to sell $1.5 billion of publicly traded securities in the New York market.

The Roaring Twenties and Depression Period

• Chase National Bank, after acquiring five banks during the 1920s, merged with The Equitable Trust Company of New York in 1930. The Chase-Equitable merger not only created the world’s largest bank in terms of assets and deposits, but also gave the Rockefeller family, which controlled Equitable, an ownership stake in Chase. The Rockefellers have been associated with Chase ever since.

• In 1927, predecessor bank Guaranty Trust opened the way for Americans to buy foreign stocks by inventing the American Depositary Receipt (ADR).

• For the banking industry, the 1930s would be the most difficult period in history. As economic conditions worsened, many bankers pitched in to help those in need. Harvey Gibson, chairman of JPMorgan Chase's predecessor Manufacturers Trust Company, organized and chaired New York City’s Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee. This private group raised more than $30 million in 1931 and 1932 to assist New Yorkers out of work, opened employment offices throughout the city and found jobs for 32,000.

Global Banking

Globalization began slowly. By 1965, only 12 U.S. banks had opened branches outside the United States. These included five predecessors of JPMorgan Chase – Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, First National Bank of Chicago, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. By 1980, some 160 U.S. banks were operating branch or representative offices outside the United States. In turn, many banks in Europe, Asia and other regions extended their operations to the United States.

• In 1947, at the invitation of U.S. military authorities, Chase National Bank established the first U.S. postwar bank branches in Germany and Japan. These branches joined existing Chase branches in London and Paris and were followed by the opening of others around the world. Among Midwestern banks, First National Bank of Chicago was perhaps the most active internationally, establishing offices in 25 countries by 1973.

Banking Industry Consolidation

In addition to the powerful trend toward globalization, a second major postwar trend was industry consolidation through mergers, acquisitions and the formation of multi-bank holding companies.

• In New York City, a wave of mergers created a few big banks serving many customers through extensive branch networks. All four of JPMorgan Chase’s major New York City heritage firms grew through mergers in the 1950s.

• Chase National Bank merged with The Bank of The Manhattan Company in 1955 to create Chase Manhattan Bank.

• Manufacturers Trust Company acquired Brooklyn Trust Company in 1950, Peoples Industrial Bank in 1953 and Manufacturers Safe Deposit Company in 1955. It then merged with Hanover Bank in 1961 to create Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company.

• J.P. Morgan & Co. merged with Guaranty Trust Company in 1959 to create Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, creating one of the world’s largest trust operations. Holding companies also gained popularity as the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 helped shape the industry for decades. The new law allowed holding companies that owned just one bank to diversify into some non-banking activities.

Development of Credit Cards

Although the first multi-use credit card was launched by Diners Club in 1950, credit cards did not gain widespread public acceptance until the late 1960s. Several JPMorgan Chase predecessors played key roles.

• In 1958, Chase introduced the Chase Manhattan Charge Plan, becoming the first New York City bank and one of the first in the nation to offer customers a single retail charge account that provided credit at a citywide network of stores.

• In 1966, shortly before founding First Banc Group, City National Bank & Trust Company of Columbus, Ohio, became one of the first banks outside California to introduce BankAmericard, the precursor of Visa. Five years later, City National was involved with the first major national test of point-of-sale terminals for processing credit card transactions.

• Manufacturers Hanover and Chemical Bank entered the national credit card business in 1969 as founding members of the Eastern States Bankcard Association. This group linked up with other regional bank groups to form a nationwide network that began issuing cards under the Master Charge Plan (now MasterCard), a direct competitor of BankAmericard.

• In 1975, Manufacturers Hanover, Chemical and Chase began testing point-of-sale credit card terminals using common switching facilities. This test eventually enabled retailers to use one terminal to authorize either a MasterCard or BankAmericard transaction, providing greater convenience for retailers and faster transaction approvals for card users.

• In 1981, Banc One received national attention for linking its Visa card issuance and data processing technology to several major brokerage firms’ money market funds, giving customers access to their money market accounts through their Visa cards. Propelled in part by the popularity of this new service, Banc One became the nation’s largest processor of Visa card transactions.

ATMs and Debit Cards

Automatic teller machines (ATMs) revolutionized banking by allowing customers to conduct transactions from almost any ATM machine in the world.

• In 1969, Chemical Bank installed the first prototype cash-dispensing machine in America, a precursor of the ATM, becoming the first bank in the country to allow customers to withdraw cash 24 hours a day.

• In 1972, First National Bank of Chicago installed two ATMs in its headquarters lobby and within two years they had the highest usage of any ATMs in the United States.

• In 1985, Chemical Bank and Manufacturers Hanover Trust were among the founders of NYCE (New York Cash Exchange), the first automatic teller network in the New York metropolitan area.

• Bank debit cards, today commonplace, were introduced in the late 1970s. Chase Manhattan introduced the Chase Money Card – the first Visa debit card offered by a bank in New York.

Home Banking by Computer

Several JPMorgan Chase predecessors played key roles in the development of home banking.

• In 1980, Banc One developed and tested one of the earliest online home banking services. Channel 2000 allowed bank customers to view their bank and department store balances on a TV screen, pay bills and shift money between accounts. The service worked over regular telephone lines.

• In 1983, Chemical Bank introduced Pronto, the first major full-fledged online banking service. Using a home computer, modem and software, customers could pay bills, transfer funds, review account balances, track budgets and balance their checkbooks.

• In 1985, Chemical introduced Pronto Business Banker, the nation’s first commercially available electronic banking and information service designed expressly for small businesses.

Difficult Competitive Environment

• By 1980, commercial banks were facing an increasingly difficult competitive environment, were rapidly losing market share as regulatory policies originally aimed at protecting banks were handicapping their ability to compete, and customers were turning increasingly to other intermediaries for financial services.

• In the 1970s, some stock brokerage firms began to compete directly with commercial banks by offering bank-like money-market accounts that paid interest, allowed check-writing and were supplemented with credit or debit cards.

• When interest rates surged in 1974, yields on money market funds surpassed 10 percent. Banks, by contrast, were barred from paying more than five percent on savings. As a result, money poured out of savings into money-market funds and other short-term instruments.

• In 1978, the Federal Reserve authorized banks to issue a new product – the 6-month money market certificate with a variable rate ceiling tied to six-month Treasury bills. Nearly all of JPMorgan Chase’s predecessor banks offered the certificates, which had a minimum denomination of $10,000.

• Later in 1978 banks were authorized to introduce “sweep” services, overcoming the longstanding prohibition against paying interest on checking. Sweep programs automatically transfer idle checking balances into interest-bearing savings and back to checking when needed.

• Congress passed the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980, which phased out all savings rate ceilings on consumer accounts over a six-year period. In 1986 the rate ceilings imposed by Glass-Steagall were completely removed.

Erosion of Glass-Steagall Barriers

Another fundamental element of Glass-Steagall – the wall between commercial and investment banking – also crumbled in response to market change. As early as 1971, a federal commission on financial regulation urged Congress to “move as far as possible toward freedom of financial markets and equip all institutions with the powers necessary to compete in such markets.” Many banks diversified to the degree they were allowed.

• In 1987, Chase Manhattan Corp. became the first commercial banking institution to receive the Fed’s approval to underwrite commercial paper (unsecured short-term corporate debt).

• The Federal Reserve quickly expanded the scope of the Chase ruling by allowing three major bank holding companies, including J.P. Morgan & Co., to underwrite not only commercial paper but also mortgage-backed securities, municipal revenue bonds and securities backed by consumer receivables. The Fed specified that these activities could not exceed five percent of a firm’s revenue. The limit was later raised to 25 percent.

• The Federal Reserve further broadened its rulings in 1989 when it granted J.P. Morgan & Co. the authority to underwrite corporate debt.

• Then in 1990 the Fed approved Morgan’s application to underwrite stocks. In 1935, J.P. Morgan & Co. had been the last bank in the United States to combine a broad range of commercial and investment banking capabilities. In the wake of the Fed’s landmark 1990 ruling, it became the first to do so again. Morgan quickly built up a leading investment banking operation and by 1997 was the fourth largest securities underwriter in the world.

• Meanwhile, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a series of rulings that enabled commercial banks to sell and underwrite insurance. The first of these rulings, in 1986, allowed national banks to sell insurance in communities with a population of less than 5,000. Four years later, this expanded to include the sale of annuities. The Comptroller’s actions were upheld unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court. Chase Manhattan formed the Chase Insurance Agency, which by 1997 was generating revenues of $120 million annually.

1999 Repeal of Glass-Steagall

• Faced with the reality that the Glass-Steagall barriers were being dismantled by regulators, Congress in 1999 passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which removed the remaining barriers and allowed financial companies to participate fully across segments. Among other provisions, the new law allowed banks to acquire full-service brokerage and investment banking firms.

• Beginning in the 1980s, J.P. Morgan & Co. had developed its investment banking capability through internal development. Chase, by contrast, built its capability through merger.

Deregulation of Branch Banking

• As of 1975, banking was still primarily a local business. Only 14 states allowed statewide branching, and none permitted out-of-state banks to open branches within their borders. However, pressure for greater branching freedom was mounting, reflecting growing awareness of the consumer convenience of branches, the need for banks to diversify their risks beyond their local markets, and an emerging legislative consensus that deregulation promotes freer markets and greater competition. Branching deregulation occurred in the 1980s at the state rather than the federal level.

• As Illinois’ anti-branching laws were eased, First Chicago Corp. – the holding company for First National Bank of Chicago acquired Chicago-based American National Corporation. Three years later, it acquired First United Financial Services Inc. Banc One and NBD Bancorp also actively acquired banking institutions in their states.

• The 1980s also saw the formation of regional banking zones, such as an agreement among Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and other Midwestern states to allow across-border bank acquisitions. These zones represented a major step toward national banking.

• Bank One Corp. was especially active in acquiring banks not only in its home state of Ohio but in other states as well. Its first out-of-state acquisition was the purchase of Purdue National Corporation of Lafayette, Indiana, in 1984. By 1994, it owned 81 banks with more than 1,300 branches in 13 states, including banks in Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona and Utah. More acquisitions followed.

• Banking zones expanded rapidly in geographic size as more states passed reciprocal banking laws. In 1987, Chemical Banking Corp. acquired Texas Commerce Bancshares, the largest interstate banking merger in U.S. history at that time. That same year, First Chicago acquired Beneficial National Bank USA of Wilmington, Delaware. In doing so, it became the third-largest issuer of bank credit cards in the United States.

• The growth of banking zones culminated in 1994 in the passage of the federal Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, which made national banking the law of the land. Riegle-Neal permitted bank holding companies to buy banks throughout the United States beginning in the fall of 1995 and permitted nationwide branching – that is, branch offices owned and operated by a single bank – as of June 1997.

• Many multi-state, multi-bank holding companies soon began to streamline operations by merging their banks. In 1999, Bank One Corp. integrated its banks in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois into a single bank with the Bank One name.

• Today, many banks operate in more than one state. At the end of 2005, JPMorgan Chase had 2,641 retail branches in 17 states, all doing business under the Chase name.

Banking Industry Consolidation

The 1990s were a period of mergers and consolidation for the banking industry. Because of consolidation, the number of commercial banks in the United States declined to 7,549 as of mid-2005 from 12,343 at the end of 1990. However, the number of branches and ATM machines continued to increase, providing consumers with more banking outlets than ever.

Moreover, even as banks merged, new banks were founded, reflecting the overall vitality of the industry. Some 1,500 new banks were established in the United States in the 10 years through 2004.

Mergers That Helped Form Today’s JPMorgan Chase

Many JPMorgan Chase predecessors took part in the merger movement that began in the early 1990s. Key transactions leading up to the formation of JPMorgan Chase included:

• In 1991, Chemical Banking Corp. combined with Manufacturers Hanover Corp. keeping the name Chemical Banking Corp., then the second-largest banking institution in the United States.
• Four years later, First Chicago Corp. merged with NBD Bancorp., forming First Chicago NBD, the largest banking company based in the Midwest.
• In 1996, Chase Manhattan Corp. merged into Chemical Banking Corp., creating what was then the largest bank holding company in the United States.
• In 1998, Banc One Corp. merged with First Chicago NBD, taking the name Bank One Corp. Merging subsequently with Louisiana’s First Commerce Corp., Bank One became the largest financial services firm in the Midwest, the fourth-largest bank in the U.S. and the world’s largest Visa credit card issuer.
• In 2000, J.P. Morgan & Co. merged with Chase Manhattan Corp., in effect combining four of the largest and oldest money center banking institutions in New York City (Morgan, Chase, Chemical and Manufacturers Hanover) into one firm called J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

• These mergers culminated in July 2004 with the joining of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank One Corp. to form today’s JPMorgan Chase & Co. Fortune Magazine said “the combined bank will be big and strong in a panoply of businesses,” adding that “the deal has been widely lauded” by investment analysts. The New York Times said the merger “would realign the competitive landscape for banks” by uniting the investment and commercial banking skills of J.P. Morgan Chase with the consumer banking strengths of Bank One.

Resources

• JPMorgan Chase Web site

References

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