JPMorgan Chase & Co is a financial service provider providing global investment banking, asset management, treasury, and other services that is headquartered in New York City, New York and was founded in 1823. According to the firms website (as of November 2019), JPMorgan Chase & Co has approximately $2.6 trillion in assets, has presence in 100 markets, and more than 250,000 employees. The firm actively conducts research related to household spending & income, small business, healthcare, household debt, cities & local communities, financial markets, and labor markets.
History
JPMorgan Chase, in its current structure, is the result of the combination of several large U.S. banking companies since 1996, including Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co., Bank One, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Going back further, its predecessors include major banking firms among which are Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, First Chicago Bank, National Bank of Detroit, Texas Commerce Bank, Providian Financial and Great Western Bank. The company's oldest predecessor institution, The Bank of the Manhattan Company, was the third oldest banking corporation in the United States, and the 31st oldest bank in the world, having been established on September 1, 1799, by Aaron Burr.
The Chase Manhattan Bank was formed upon the 1955 purchase of Chase National Bank (established in 1877) by The Bank of the Manhattan Company (established in 1799), the company's oldest predecessor institution. The Bank of the Manhattan Company was the creation of Aaron Burr, who transformed the company from a water carrier into a bank.
According to page 115 of An Empire of Wealth by John Steele Gordon, the origin of this strand of JPMorgan Chase's history runs as follows:
At the turn of the nineteenth century, obtaining a bank charter required an act of the state legislature. This of course injected a powerful element of politics into the process and invited what today would be called corruption but then was regarded as business as usual. Hamilton's political enemy—and eventual murderer—Aaron Burr was able to create a bank by sneaking a clause into a charter for a company, called The Manhattan Company, to provide clean water to New York City. The innocuous-looking clause allowed the company to invest surplus capital in any lawful enterprise. Within six months of the company's creation, and long before it had laid a single section of water pipe, the company opened a bank, the Bank of the Manhattan Company. Still in existence, it is today JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States.
Led by David Rockefeller during the 1970s and 1980s, Chase Manhattan emerged as one of the largest and most prestigious banking concerns, with leadership positions in syndicated lending, treasury and securities services, credit cards, mortgages, and retail financial services. Weakened by the real estate collapse in the early 1990s, it was acquired by Chemical Bank in 1996, retaining the Chase name. Before its merger with J.P. Morgan & Co., the new Chase expanded the investment and asset management groups through two acquisitions. In 1999, it acquired San Francisco-based Hambrecht & Quist for $1.35 billion. In April 2000, UK-based Robert Fleming & Co. was purchased by the new Chase Manhattan Bank for $7.7 billion.
J.P. Morgan & Company
The House of Morgan was born out of the partnership of Drexel, Morgan & Co., which in 1895 was renamed J.P. Morgan & Co. (see also: J. Pierpont Morgan).J.P. Morgan & Co. financed the formation of the United States Steel Corporation, which took over the business of Andrew Carnegie and others and was the world's first billion dollar corporation. In 1895, J.P. Morgan & Co. supplied the United States government with $62 million in gold to float a bond issue and restore the treasury surplus of $100 million. In 1892, the company began to finance the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and led it through a series of acquisitions that made it the dominant railroad transporter in New England
Built in 1914, 23 Wall Street was the bank's headquarters for decades. On September 16, 1920, a terrorist bomb exploded in front of the bank, injuring 400 and killing 38. Shortly before the bomb went off, a warning note was placed in a mailbox at the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. The case has never been solved, and was rendered inactive by the FBI in 1940.
In August 1914, Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner, made a deal with the Bank of England to make J.P. Morgan & Co. the monopoly underwriter of war bonds for the UK and France. The Bank of England became a "fiscal agent" of J.P. Morgan & Co., and vice versa. The company also invested in the suppliers of war equipment to Britain and France. The company profited from the financing and purchasing activities of the two European governments. Since the U.S. federal government withdrew from world affairs under successive isolationist Republican administrations in the 1920s, J.P. Morgan & Co. continued playing a major role in global affairs since most European countries still owed war debts.
In the 1930s, J.P. Morgan & Co. and all integrated banking businesses in the United States were required by the provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act to separate their investment banking from their commercial banking operations. J.P. Morgan & Co. chose to operate as a commercial bank.
In 1935, after being barred from the securities business for over a year, the heads of J.P. Morgan spun off its investment-banking operations. Led by J.P. Morgan partners, Henry S. Morgan (son of Jack Morgan and grandson of J. Pierpont Morgan) and Harold Stanley, Morgan Stanley was founded on September 16, 1935, with $6.6 million of nonvoting preferred stock from J.P. Morgan partners.[better source needed] In order to bolster its position, in 1959, J.P. Morgan merged with the Guaranty Trust Company of New York to form the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company.The bank would continue to operate as Morgan Guaranty Trust until the 1980s, before migrating back to the use of the J.P. Morgan brand. In 1984, the group purchased the Purdue National Corporation of Lafayette, Indiana. In 1988, the company once again began operating exclusively as J.P. Morgan & Co.
