The story
Founded by Norman Wait Harris in 1882.1
In 1882, Norman Wait Harris established N.W. Harris & Co., a Chicago-based municipal bond broker and the forerunner of Harris Bank. Harris Trust and Savings Bank was established in 1907. It merged with Chicago National Bank in 1960 and was restructured as Harris Bank, N.A. in 1972. Bank of Montreal (later known as BMO Financial Group) acquired control of Harris in 1984.
The bank grew rapidly through a series of acquisitions, beginning with the First National Bank of Barrington in 1985, State Bank of St. Charles and First National Bank of Batavia in 1988, and Libertyville Federal Savings Bank and Loan and Frankfort Bancshares in 1990. Harris Bankcorp and Suburban Bancorp combined under the Harris name in 1994 and the company acquired 54 Chicago area branches from Household Bank in 1996. In 1999, the direct brokerage firm Burke, Christensen & Lewis merged with Harris Investors Direct to form Harris InvestorLine. The company's further acquisitions include Freeman Welwood in 2000; Village Bank of Naples and Century Bank (Arizona) and First National Bank of Joliet in 2001; and Northwestern Trust and Investors Advisory Company (Seattle) in 2002. Also in 2002, InvestorLine combined with CSFBdirect to form Harrisdirect and Harris acquired online client accounts of Morgan Stanley Individual Investor Group and myCFO. In 2003, it purchased Sullivan, Bruyette Speros & Blayney Incorporated, followed by Lakeland Community Bank in Round Lake and Villa Park Trust and Savings Bank in 2005.
BMO continued its acquisitions in 2007 with First National Bank & Trust (Kokomo, Indiana), followed by Ozaukee Bank (Cedarburg, Wisconsin) and Merchant and Manufacturers Bankcorp Inc. (New Berlin, Wisconsin) in 2008 and Amcore Bank N.A. (Rockford, Illinois) in 2010.
On December 17, 2010, Bank of Montreal agreed to purchase Milwaukee-based Marshall & Ilsley Corporation in an all-stock transaction valued at about $4.1 billion. Marshall & Ilsley and Harris Bankcorp were both rebranded as BMO Harris. The company restructured as BMO Bankcorp in 2011.
In 2015, the company completed its acquisition of General Electric Capital Corp.'s transportation finance business.
BMO was the bank with the second-most deposits in Chicago by June 2018, with 11.5% market share. Also that month, its BMO Harris division was operating in eight US states.
In 2021, Bank of Montreal agreed to purchase Bank of the West with the intent to merge it with BMO Harris Bank, which would at least double its U.S. presence. The acquisition of Bank of the West was completed in February 2023, and the Bank of the West brand was absorbed into the global BMO brand later that year. Coinciding with this merger, BMO Harris Bank announced that it would retire the combined "BMO Harris" brand and start to use the global BMO brand of its Canadian parent company. The company now primarily does business as "BMO Bank N.A.".
From Wikipedia’s article on BMO Bank, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4