19th century The bank was established on 23 June 1817 when a group of merchants signed the Articles of Association, formally creating the "Montreal Bank". The signors of the document include
Robert Armour, John C. Bush,
Austin Cuvillier,
George Garden,
Horatio Gates,
James Leslie,
George Moffatt,
John Richardson, and Thomas A. Turner. The bank was first located in rooms rented on
Rue Saint-Paul,
Montreal, before moving to its permanent building on Rue Saint-Paul in 1818. In the same year, the bank opened its first branch in
Quebec City; and several offices in
Upper Canada, including
Amherstburg,
Kingston,
Perth, and
York (present day
Toronto). The bank also opened its first foreign permanent office in 1818, opening an office in
Willam Street in
New York City. co-founded BMO with nine other businessmen in June 1817. By 1822, the bank converted from the status it had held since its founding as a private company owned by a small group of people into a public company owned by 144. At this time, it became officially known by its current name.
Token. Expansion into Upper Canada was halted in 1824, after legislation from the
Parliament of Upper Canada forbade bank branches whose head offices were not based in Upper Canada from operating. In 1838, the bank reentered the Upper Canadian market with the purchase of the
Bank of the People, a bank based in Toronto. The colonial government of Newfoundland made the request to the Bank of Montreal four days after the collapse of the Commercial Bank and Union Bank of Newfoundland on 10 December 1894.
20th century By 1907, the bank had branches in every province of
Atlantic Canada, with the opening of a branch in
Charlottetown. In 1960, the Bank of Montreal moved its operational headquarters to a seventeen-storey structure next to its historic head office. The structure was named after the bank's slogan at the time,
The First Canadian Bank, which was introduced in 1969, and was prominent in much of the bank's advertising during the 1970's, most notably in television commercials featuring Canadian actor
Leslie Nielsen. The bank's present "M-Bar" logo was also introduced during this time, in 1967. However, the bank's legal headquarters remains at the historic Montreal head office, with First Canadian Place formally listed as the "executive office" of the bank. In 1987, the bank acquired stock brokerage
Nesbitt, Thomson and Company. Several years later, the bank assumed control of two retail branches formerly belonging to the
Standard Chartered Bank of Canada. In 1994, the Bank of Montreal became the first Canadian bank to be listed on the
New York Stock Exchange. Although the banks did not merge, in 2000, the Bank of Montreal, together with the Royal Bank of Canada, merged their merchant
payment processor businesses to form
Moneris Solutions.
21st century In 2006, BMO bought BCPBank, a Schedule C financial institution that was the Canadian division of
Banco Comercial Português. In 2008, a Bank of Montreal trader pleaded guilty to intentionally mismarking his trading book in order to increase his bonus from the bank. In 2009, BMO purchased
AIG's Canadian life insurance business, AIG Life Insurance Company of Canada (400,000 customers and 300 employees), for approximately CA$330 million, making BMO the second-biggest life insurer among Canadian banks. The new component was renamed BMO Life Assurance Company. In the same year, the Bank of Montreal acquired the
Diners Club International's North American franchise from
Citibank. The transaction gave BMO exclusive rights to issue Diners cards in the US and Canada. -based bank
Marshall & Ilsley prior to its acquisition by the Bank of Montreal in 2010. In October 2010, the bank became the first Canadian bank to incorporate in China, with branches in China operating as BMO ChinaCo. In December 2010, BMO announced the purchase of
Milwaukee-based
Marshall & Ilsley, and was later amalgamated with its Harris Bank operations. When the transaction completed, M&I Bank, along with current Harris Bank branches were rebranded
BMO Harris Bank. In 2022, BMO booked US$834 million after being found liable for Marshall & Ilsley Bank Ponzi scheme with damages of US$550 million. In 2009, businessman
Thomas Petters was found guilty of running the scheme using an account at
Marshall & Ilsley between 2002 and 2008. When BMO bought
Marshall & Ilsley and assumed the liability. In 2014, the bank acquired London-based
Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust, later re-branding it as BMO Commercial Property Trust in 2019. In September 2015, BMO agreed to acquire
General Electric Co. subsidiary GE Capital's transportation-finance unit. The business acquired has US$8.7 billion (CA$11.5 billion) of assets, 600 employees and 15 offices in the US and Canada. BMO and
Simplii Financial (a subsidiary of the
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) were the targets of hackers in May 2018, who claimed to have compromised the systems of both banks and stolen information on a combined 90,000 customers (50,000 from BMO). An email sent from a Russian address and attributed to the hackers demanded a ransom of 1 million from each company paid via
Ripple by 11:59 pm on 28 May 2018 or the information would be released on "fraud forum and fraud community". In 2018, BMO went into the
marijuana sector with a $175 million deal for a stake in a producer. It was the first investment in the sector by a "Big Five Canadian bank". In January 2018, the bank was accused in a lawsuit along with five other Canadian banks for "conspiring to rig a Canadian rate benchmark to improve profits from derivatives trading". After resigning from the Canadian Liberal cabinet,
Scott Brison was hired by the bank as its vice-chair of investment and corporate banking in February 2019. In February 2019, it became reported that its US retail profits had surged. The bank moved its
New York City headquarters in April 2019, to a former
Conde Nast building. That month, the bank's
Irish subsidiary was fined several million for a license breach. To settle charges by the SEC that it hid conflicts of interest from clients in 2016, in September 2019 the Bank of Montreal's two units in Chicago paid $38 million. In December 2019, the bank cut 2,300 jobs, after a drop in quarterly earnings, effecting around five percent of the workforce. The company had plans to "double indigenous lending" in September 2019. There was controversy and protests in January 2020 after a12-year-old
First Nations girl and her grandfather were handcuffed by police at a
Vancouver branch of the bank following an identification discrepancy. The Vancouver mayor criticized the bank for what he termed giving false information to the police. The police were afterwards investigated. A human rights claim was later filed in response to the incident. A settlement was eventually reached, which included an undisclosed monetary payment to the victims, an apology ceremony in Bella Bella, territorial acknowledgement plaques installed at certain branches and BMO updating internal policies and procedures for how status cards are handled. After the incident, BMO launched an Indigenous Advisory Council with Indigenous members from a number of provinces. The CEO of the bank argued against
fossil fuel divestment in March 2020, after it "acquired $3 billion of energy loans from
Deutsche Bank DBKGn.DE in 2018". In 2021, BMO signed the UN Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) with the goal to reach global net-zero climate targets as well as net-zero financed emissions in their lending by 2050. In July 2022, BMO acquired Calgary-based Radicle Group Inc., an adviser to companies on sustainability and measuring carbon emissions. In December 2021, BMO agreed to acquire San Francisco-based
Bank of the West from
BNP Paribas, with the intent of merging it with BMO Harris Bank, which would at least double BMO's total presence in the United States. BMO's acquisition of Bank of the West was completed in February 2023, and the Bank of the West brand is planned to be absorbed into the BMO brand by September 2023. In January 2024, BMO became the first new member of the club of United Kingdom Bond dealers in 10 years, becoming one of the primary-dealer banks that buy bonds directly from the government. By buying bonds directly from the government, banks help create a liquid market for government debt, but they also have to hold additional capital as insurance against possible losses. In 2013, the number of primary bond dealers reached 21, by 2024 it had dropped to 16. ==Corporate information==