JPMorgan Chase is the result of the combination of several large U.S. banking companies that merged since 1996, combining Chase Manhattan Bank,
J.P. Morgan & Co., and
Bank One, as well as asset assumptions of
Bear Stearns,
Washington Mutual, and
First Republic. Predecessors included additional historic, 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 established on September 1, 1799, by
Aaron Burr.
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. 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 banks, 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. In April 2000, UK-based
Robert Fleming & Co. was purchased by the new Chase Manhattan Bank for $7.7 billion.
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"). In the 1980s and early 1990s, Chemical emerged as one of the leaders in the financing of
leveraged buyout transactions. In 1984, Chemical launched
Chemical Venture Partners to invest in
private equity transactions alongside various
financial sponsors. By the late 1980s, Chemical developed its reputation for financing buyouts, building a
syndicated leveraged finance business and related advisory businesses under the auspices of investment banker,
Jimmy Lee. At many points throughout this history, Chemical Bank was the largest bank, either in terms of
assets or
deposit market share, in the United States. In 1996, Chemical Bank acquired Chase Manhattan. Although Chemical was the nominal survivor, it took the better-known Chase name. To this day, JPMorgan Chase retains Chemical's pre-1996 stock price history, as well as Chemical's former headquarters site at
270 Park Avenue.
J.P. Morgan and Company The
House of Morgan was born out of the partnership of
Drexel, Morgan & Co., which in 1895 was renamed
J.P. Morgan & Co. 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. 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 its
investment banking from its
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. 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 began operations in
Japan in 1924, in
Australia during the later part of the nineteenth century, and in
Indonesia during the early 1920s. An office of the Equitable Eastern Banking Corporation (one of J.P. Morgan's predecessors) opened a branch in
China in 1921 and Chase National Bank was established there in 1923. The bank has operated in
Saudi Arabia and
India since the 1930s. Chase Manhattan Bank opened an office in
South Korea in 1967. The firm's presence in
Greece dates to 1968. An office of JPMorgan was opened in Taiwan in 1970, in
Russia (
Soviet Union) in 1973, and
Nordic operations began during the same year. Operations in Poland began in 1995. He succeeded former CEO
William B. Harrison Jr. Dimon introduced new cost-cutting strategies, and replaced former JPMorgan Chase executives in key positions with Bank One executives—many of whom were with Dimon at
Citigroup. Dimon became CEO in December 2005 and chairman in December 2006.
Bank One Corporation was formed with the 1998 merger of Banc One of
Columbus, Ohio and
First Chicago NBD. This merger was considered a failure until Dimon took over and reformed the new firm's practices. Dimon effected changes to make Bank One Corporation a viable merger partner for JPMorgan Chase. Bank One Corporation, formerly First Bancgroup of Ohio, was 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 it spread into other states, always renaming acquired banks "Bank One". After the
First Chicago NBD merger, adverse financial results led to the departure of CEO
John B. McCoy, whose father and grandfather had headed Banc One and predecessors. JPMorgan Chase completed the merger with
Bank One in the third quarter of 2004. On Friday, March 14, 2008, Bear Stearns lost 47% of its equity market value as rumors emerged that clients were withdrawing capital from the bank. Over the following weekend, it emerged that Bear Stearns might prove
insolvent, and on March 15, 2008, the Federal Reserve engineered a deal to prevent a wider systemic crisis from the collapse of Bear Stearns. On March 16, 2008, after a weekend of intense negotiations between JPMorgan, Bear, and the federal government, JPMorgan Chase announced its plans to acquire Bear Stearns in a
stock swap worth $2.00 per share or $240 million pending shareholder approval scheduled within 90 days. On March 18, 2008, JPMorgan Chase formally announced the acquisition of Bear Stearns for $236 million. On March 24, 2008, after public discontent over the low acquisition price threatened the deal's closure, a revised offer was announced at approximately $10 per share.
Washington Mutual On September 25, 2008, JPMorgan Chase bought most of the banking operations of
Washington Mutual from the
receivership of the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That night, the
Office of Thrift Supervision, in what was by far the largest bank failure in American history, had seized Washington Mutual Bank and placed it into receivership. The FDIC sold the bank's assets, secured debt obligations, and deposits to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.836 billion, which re-opened the bank the following day. However, Chase did not purchase any mortgages in the FDIC receivership as the loans had already been sold off into Washington Mutual-branded mortgage-backed securities long before the receivership happened on September 25, 2008. If Chase wanted ownership of any Washington Mutual mortgages, it had to purchase them from the FDIC by way of a Receiver's Deed or Bill of Sale. This could not occur, as there were no mortgages on Washington Mutual Bank's books at time of receivership. Any recorded Assignments of Mortgage claiming that Chase was "successor in interest" and that the transfer occurred "by operation of law", would be incorrect. The FDIC was "successor in interest" to Washington Mutual Bank. Chase's purchase of the bank from the FDIC was for Washington Mutual Bank only and it occurred by a Purchase & Assumption Agreement and not "by operation of law" from the receivership. As a result of the takeover, Washington Mutual shareholders lost all their
equity. JPMorgan Chase raised $10 billion in a stock sale to cover writedowns and losses after taking on deposits and branches of Washington Mutual. Through the acquisition, JPMorgan now owns the former accounts of
Providian Financial, a credit card issuer WaMu acquired in 2005. The company announced plans to complete the rebranding of Washington Mutual branches to Chase by late 2009. Chief executive
Alan H. Fishman received a $7.5 million sign-on bonus and cash severance of $11.6 million after being CEO for 17 days.
First Republic Bank On May 1, 2023, in what was now the second largest bank failure behind JPMorgan's acquisition of
Washington Mutual fifteen years earlier, the company acquired "the substantial majority of assets" and inherited the deposits of First Republic Bank. Under terms disclosed by JPMorgan Chase, it will make a $10.6 billion payment to the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, return $25 billion in funds that other banks deposited with First Republic in March in a lifeline negotiated with the
US Department of Treasury at that time, and will eliminate a $5 billion deposit it had made with First Republic. As a result of the takeover, First Republic Bank shareholders lost all their
equity. The FDIC estimates that the cost to the
Deposit Insurance Fund will be about $13 billion.
Recent history 2006 In 2006, JPMorgan Chase purchased
Collegiate Funding Services, a portfolio company of private equity firm
Lightyear Capital, for $663 million. CFS was used as the foundation for the Chase Student Loans, previously known as Chase Education Finance. In April 2006, JPMorgan Chase acquired
Bank of New York Mellon's retail and small business banking network. The acquisition gave Chase access to 339 additional branches in
New York,
New Jersey, and
Connecticut. In 2008, J.P. Morgan acquired the UK-based
carbon offsetting company
ClimateCare. JPMorgan Chase was the biggest bank at the end of 2008 as an individual bank (exclusive of its subsidiaries) during the
2008 financial crisis.
2008–2009 On October 28, 2008, $25 billion in funds were transferred from the
U.S. Treasury Department to JPMorgan Chase, under the
Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This was the fifth largest amount transferred under Section A of TARP to help troubled assets related to residential
mortgages. It has been widely reported that JPMorgan Chase was in much better financial shape than other banks and did not need TARP funds but accepted the funds because the government did not want to single out only the banks with capital issues. JPMorgan Chase stated in February 2009 that it would be using its capital-base monetary strength to acquire new businesses. By February 2009, the U.S. government had not moved forward in enforcing TARP's intent of funding JPMorgan Chase with $25 billion. In November 2009, J.P. Morgan announced it would acquire the balance of J.P. Morgan Cazenove, an advisory and underwriting joint venture established in 2004 with the
Cazenove Group. Earlier in 2011, the company announced that by the use of
field-programmable gate array-based
supercomputers, the time taken to
assess risk had been greatly reduced, from arriving at a conclusion within hours to what is now minutes. In 2013, J.P. Morgan acquired Bloomspot, a San Francisco-based startup. Shortly after the acquisition, the service was shut down and Bloomspot's talent was left unused.
2013 In 2013, after teaming up with the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
GlaxoSmithKline and
Children's Investment Fund, JPMorgan Chase, under Dimon launched a $94 million fund with a focus on "late-stage healthcare technology trials". The fund will "give money to final-stage drug, vaccine, and medical device studies that are otherwise stalled at companies because of their relatively high failure risk and low consumer demand. Examples of problems that could be addressed by the fund include
malaria,
tuberculosis,
HIV/AIDS, and
maternal and
infant mortality", according to the Gates and JPMorgan Chase led-group.
2014 The
2014 JPMorgan Chase data breach, disclosed in September 2014, compromised the JPMorgan Chase accounts of over 83 million customers. The attack was discovered by the bank's security team in late July 2014, but not completely halted until the middle of August. In October 2014, J.P. Morgan sold its commodities trader unit to Mercuria for $800 million, a quarter of the initial valuation of $3.5 billion, as the transaction excluded some oil and metal stockpiles and other assets.
2016 In March 2016, J.P. Morgan decided not to finance
coal mines and
coal power plants in wealthy countries. In October 2016, J.P.Morgan unveiled its permissioned blockchain called Quorum, based on
Ethereum's
GO programming language. In December 2016, 14 former executives of the Wendel investment company faced trial for
tax fraud while JPMorgan Chase was to be pursued for complicity. Jean-Bernard Lafonta was convicted December 2015 for spreading false information and insider trading, and fined 1.5 million euros.
2017 In March 2017, Lawrence Obracanik, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. employee, pleaded guilty to criminal charges that he stole more than $5 million from his employer to pay personal debts. In June 2017, Matt Zames, then-COO of the bank, decided to leave the firm. In December 2017, J.P. Morgan was sued by the
Nigerian government for $875 million, which
Nigeria alleges was transferred by J.P. Morgan to a corrupt former minister. Nigeria accused J.P. Morgan of being "grossly negligent".
2019 In February 2019, J.P. Morgan announced the launch of
JPM Coin, a
digital token that will be used to settle transactions between clients of its wholesale payments business. It would be the first
cryptocurrency issued by a United States bank.
2021 On April 19, 2021, JP Morgan pledged $5billion towards the
European Super League. a controversial breakaway group of football clubs seeking to create a monopolistic structure where the founding members would be guaranteed entry to the competition in perpetuity. They funded the failed attempt to create the league, which, if successful, would have ended the meritocratic European pyramid soccer system. J.P. Morgan's role in the creation of the Super League was instrumental; the investment bank was reported to have worked on it for several years. After a strong backlash, the owners/management of the teams that proposed creating the league pulled out of it. After the attempt to end the European football hierarchy failed, J.P. Morgan apologized for its role in the scheme. While the absence of promotion and relegation is a common sports model in the US, this is an antithesis to the European competition-based pyramid model and has led to widespread condemnation from Football federations internationally as well as at government level. However, even at the time, JPMorgan had been involved in European football for almost 20 years. In 2003, it advised the
Glazer ownership of Manchester United. It also advised
Rocco Commisso, the owner of
Mediacom, to purchase
ACF Fiorentina, and
Dan Friedkin on his takeover of
A.S. Roma. Moreover, It aided
Inter Milan and A.S. Roma to sell bonds backed by future media revenue, and Spain's
Real Madrid CF to raise funds to refurbish its
Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. In September 2021, JPMorgan Chase entered the UK retail banking market by launching an app-based
current account under the
Chase brand
Chase UK. This is the company's first retail banking operation outside of the United States. In 2021, the company made more than over 30 acquisitions including OpenInvest and
Nutmeg. In March 2022, JPMorgan Chase announced that would acquire
Global Shares (now is J.P. Morgan Workplace solutions), a cloud-based provider of equity management software. In November 2021, JPMorgan Chase acquired restaurant recommendation website and owner of
Zagat,
The Infatuation. In June 2021, JPMorgan Chase invested in Brazilian digital bank C6, acquiring 40% of the company. The amount of investment was not disclosed, but 6 months before the deal C6 was valued at 2.28 billion dollars.
2022 In 2022, JPMorgan Chase was ranked 24 on the
Fortune 500 rankings of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. In March 2022, JPMorgan Chase announced to wind down its business in
Russia in compliance with regulatory and licensing requirements. On May 20, 2022, JPMorgan Chase used
blockchain for collateral settlements, the latest
Wall Street experimentation with the technology in the trading of traditional financial assets. In September 2022, the company announced it was acquiring California-based Renovite Technologies to expand its payments processing business amid heavy competition from fintech firms like
Stripe and
Adyen. This comes on top of previous, similar moves of buying a 49% stake in fintech Viva Wallet and a majority sake in Volkswagen's payments business, among many other acquisitions in other areas of finance. In November 2022, JPMorgan Chase sent COO Daniel Pinto to the
Global Financial Leaders' Investment Summit in Hong Kong. The attendance of US financial executives drew heavy criticism from some US lawmakers, who had previously urged the US financial executives to cancel their attendance to the summit.
2023 In May 2023,
CNBC reported JPMorgan Chase was developing a new tool for investment advisers using artificial intelligence called IndexGPT. Via trademark filing, this would rely on a "disruptive form of artificial intelligence" and cloud computing software to select investments for customers. This move was a sign the bank intended to launch a product in the near term, given the requirements around filing, and it came amid a flurry of development around
ChatGPT and this technology from financial institutions. This came amid a period of job cuts, including for technology roles, even as the company emphasize its commitment to AI and created a model to detect potential changes in Federal Reserve policy. JP increased its stake in Brazilian digital bank C6 to 46% in 2023: the bank has increased the number of customers from 8 million to 25 million since 2021 and its loan portfolio from R$9.5 billion (about $2 billion) to R$40 billion ($8.2 billion).
2025 In February 2025, Matt Sable and Melissa Smith were appointed as co-heads of commercial banking by JPMorgan Chase. In February 2025, JPMorgan Chase hired Jonathan Slaughter from Goldman Sachs to join its business services unit within the investment bank. Slaughter was hired to focus on bolstering the expansion of JPMorgan's business services in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In March 2025,
Charlie Javice, founder of the college financial aid startup
Frank, was convicted on all counts of fraud related to JPMorgan Chase's $175 million acquisition of her company. Alongside Frank's chief growth officer, Olivier Amar, Javice was found guilty of securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy. The fraud centered on Javice and Amar falsely representing Frank's user base to JPMorgan. Prosecutors revealed that the company claimed to have 4.25 million users, when in reality, it had only about 300,000. Amar had purchased fake customer lists from third parties to create the illusion of a much larger client base. JPMorgan only realized the fraud when it attempted to contact Frank's customers and received fewer responses than expected. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO, has since called the Frank acquisition a "huge mistake." On September 8, 2025, the
New York Times Magazine revealed a
Times investigation which found that JP Morgan Chase "enabled the crimes" of former major financier and sex trafficker
Jeffrey Epstein. On November 14, 2025, U.S. President
Donald Trump directed the
U.S. Department of Justice to investigate former financier and child sex offender
Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with, among others, JP Morgan Chase. However, some, including U.S. House of Representatives member
Thomas Massie (
R-Kentucky), noted that this and the other new Department of Justice investigations against Epstein may have been intended to distract the U.S. Department of Justice and prevent release of the
Epstein Files at an earlier date. In August 2025, President
Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal banking regulators to investigate "politicized or unlawful debanking" by financial institutions and remove "reputational risk" from their guidance and examination standards. In an interview days before signing the order, Trump claimed that JPMorgan Chase had given him 20 days to close his account and that
Bank of America had subsequently refused his business. JPMorgan responded that it does not close accounts for political reasons and said it agreed with Trump that "regulatory change is desperately needed." In November 2025, both JPMorgan and Bank of America disclosed in SEC filings that they were responding to government inquiries related to the executive order. Later that month,
Trump Media & Technology Group CEO
Devin Nunes alleged that JPMorgan Chase had "debanked" the company in March 2024, immediately after it completed its merger and went public, and had provided the company's banking records to federal investigators pursuant to subpoenas issued as part of the
Arctic Frost investigation. Florida Attorney General
James Uthmeier subsequently opened an investigation into whether JPMorgan improperly coordinated with the federal government, noting that the DOJ had subpoenaed Trump Media's records in March 2023, before the company went public and covering a period before the company existed. In December 2025, CEO
Jamie Dimon responded to the allegations, stating "people have to grow up here... stop making up things" and denying that JPMorgan debanks customers for political or religious reasons, while acknowledging the bank complies with government subpoenas and calling for regulatory reform. In February 2026, JPMorgan admitted that it closed Trump's accounts in 2021. == Lawsuits and legal settlements by years ==