In 2004, the company merged with Bank One of Chicago, bringing on board Bank One CEO Jamie Dimon as president and COO of the merged firm and designating him as CEO William B. Harrison, Jr.'s future successor. Dimon quickly made his influence felt by embarking on a cost-cutting strategy and placing some former Bank One executives in key ranks at the new company. Dimon became CEO in January 2006, and also became chairman in December 2006.

JPMorgan Chase operates as the brand for the holding company. Chase is used as the brand for credit card services and the bank's retail banking activities in the United States:

Checking
Credit Cards
Savings
CDs
Online Banking & Bill Pay
Home Equity
Mortgages
Auto/Vehicle loans
Student Loans
Business and Commercial Banking
Insurance
Investments
Retirement Planning
JPMorgan & Co. is used as the brand for the bank's:

Investment Bank
Worldwide Securities Services
Private Bank
Asset Management
One Equity Partners
Private Client Services

History

Chemical Banking Corporation

The New York Chemical Manufacturing Company was founded in 1823 as a maker of various chemicals. In 1824, the company amended its charter to perform banking activities and created the Chemical Bank of New York. After 1851, the bank was separated from its parent and grew organically and through a series of mergers, most notably with Corn Exchange Bank in 1954, Texas Commerce Bank (a large bank in Texas) in 1986, and Manufacturer's Hanover Trust Company in 1991 (The first major bank merger "among equals.") At many points throughout this history, Chemical Bank was the largest bank in the United States (either in terms of assets or deposit market share).

In 1996, the company acquired the Chase Manhattan Corporation but kept that name. In 2000, the company acquired J.P. Morgan & Co. and changed its name to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPMorgan Chase retains Chemical Bank's headquarters and stock history.

Chase Manhattan Bank

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. Led by David Rockefeller during the 1970s and the 1980s, Chase Manhattan was 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.

Bank One Corporation

Bank One Corporation was formed upon the 1998 merger between Banc One of Ohio and First Chicago NBD. These two large banking companies had themselves been created through the merger of many banks.

The bank traces its roots to First Bancgroup of Ohio, founded as a holding company for City National Bank of Columbus, Ohio and several other banks in that state, all of which were renamed "Bank One" when the holding company was renamed Banc One Corporation. With the beginning of interstate banking they spread into other states, always renaming acquired banks "Bank One", though for a long time they resisted combining them into one bank. After the NBD merger, adverse financial results led to the departure of CEO John B. McCoy, whose father and grandfather had headed Banc One and predecessors. Jamie Dimon, a former key executive of Citigroup, was brought in to head the company.

J.P. Morgan & Company

In 1895, Drexel, Morgan & Co. became J.P. Morgan & Co. (see also: John Pierpont Morgan). It 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, it 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.

Its primary competitor, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., was a more successful adviser and financier to production companies and J.P. Morgan lost its first place in market cap and the league tables. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. would, through a series of mergers and divestitures, eventually become publicly held Lehman Brothers.

Built in 1914, 23 Wall Street was known as the "House of Morgan", and, for decades, the bank's headquarters was the most important address in American finance. At noon, on 16 September 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 warning read: Remember we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you. American Anarchists Fighters. While theories abound about who was behind the Wall Street bombing and why they did it, after twenty years investigating the matter, the FBI rendered the file inactive in 1940 without ever finding the perpetrators.

In August 1914, Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner, traveled to England and made a deal with the Bank of England to make J. P. Morgan & Co. the monopoly underwriter of war bonds for England 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 England and France. Thus, the company profited from the financing and buying activities of the two European governments.

In the 1930s, JPMorgan was forced by the Glass-Steagall Act to choose either commercial banking or investment banking. JPMorgan chose to operate as a commercial bank, because it was perceived to be more profitable in the post depression era. Faced with this new paradigm shift, many JPMorgan partners along with some Drexel partners, sought to begin what is now called Morgan Stanley. It is a common misconception that the "Morgan" in Morgan Stanley is the last name of John Pierpont Morgan, but in fact, it is the last name of Henry Morgan who was a J.P. Morgan partner. J.P. Morgan and Co. incorporated in 1940 , and, in 1959, merged with the Guaranty Trust Company of New York to form the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. Ten years later, it established a bank holding company called J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated as its parent. By the late 1990s when it was acquired by Chase Manhattan, amendments to the Glass-Steagall Act allowed JPMorgan to turn itself into an investment bank, too. Besides investment banking, it also offered private banking and private equity services.

JPMorgan were advisors to Malcolm Glazer & Family in their takeover of Manchester United but resigned this position after the Glazers voted three of the Manchester United directors off the board, against the advice of JPMorgan.

In 2006, JPMorgan Chase purchased Collegiate Funding Services, LLC, and created Chase Education Finance.

On 7 April 2006, JPMorgan Chase announced it would be swapping its corporate trust unit for Bank of New York Co.'s retail and small business banking network. The swap values the Bank of New York business at $3.1 billion and JPMorgan's trust unit at $2.8 billion and gives Chase access to 338 additional branches and 700,000 new customers in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut Tri-State area.

For the first quarter of 2007, JPMorgan Chase posted a net income of $4.9 billion on a record $19.0 billion in revenues.

The Bank of Manhattan was the creation of Aaron Burr, who transformed the Manhattan Company from a water carrier into a bank.

Offices

Although Chase Manhattan Bank's headquarters were once located at the One Chase Manhattan Plaza building in downtown Manhattan, the current world headquarters for JPMorgan Chase & Co. are located at 270 Park Avenue. The bank moved some of its operations to the JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly Texas Commerce Bank Tower) in Houston, Texas, when it purchased Texas Commerce Bank. Since merging with Bank One in 2004, retail services (branded as "Chase") are headquartered in Chicago. The Card Services division has its headquarters in Wilmington, DE. There are also large operations centers in Brooklyn, NY, Columbus, OH, Dallas, TX, Fort Worth, TX, Indianapolis, IN, Newark, DE, Phoenix, AZ, Glasgow, United Kingdom and Bournemouth, United Kingdom. The backoffice and Technology operations offices based in Mumbai and Bangalore, India are currently being aggressively staffed. However Employees at the 10 South Dearborn location in Chicago IL have nothing to worry about, until next month

JPMorgan Securities, the investment banking arm of JPMorgan, also maintains a number of high-profile offices around the globe, with the largest concentrations in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo. The bulk of North American operations, however, take place in two buildings located on both sides of Park Avenue in New York City: the former Union Carbide Building at 270 Park Avenue, the hub of sales and trading operations, and the original Chemical Bank building at 277 Park Avenue, where most investment banking activity takes place.