The story
Bank of New York
The first bank in the U.S. was the Bank of North America in Philadelphia, which was chartered by the Continental Congress in 1781; Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Isaac Roosevelt were among its founding shareholders. In February 1784, The Massachusetts Bank in Boston was chartered.
The shipping industry in New York City chafed under the lack of a bank, and investors envied the 14% dividends that Bank of North America paid, and months of local discussion culminated in a June 1784 meeting at a coffee house on St. George's Square which led to the formation of the Bank of New York company. The bank operated without a charter for seven years. The initial plan was to capitalize the company with $750,000, a third in cash and the rest in mortgages, but after this was disputed the first offering was to capitalize it with $500,000 in gold or silver. When the bank opened on June 9, 1784, the full $500,000 had not been raised; 723 shares had been sold, held by 192 people. Aaron Burr had three of them, and Hamilton had one and a half shares. The first president was Alexander McDougall and the Cashier was William Seton.
Its first offices were in the old Walton Mansion in New York City. In 1787, it moved to a site on Hanover Square that the New York Cotton Exchange later moved into.
The bank provided the United States government its first loan in 1789. The loan was orchestrated by Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, and it paid the salaries of United States Congress members and President George Washington.
The Bank of New York was the first company to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange when it first opened in 1792. In 1796, the bank moved to a location at the corner of Wall Street and William Street, which would later become 48 Wall Street.
The bank had a monopoly on banking services in the city until the Bank of the Manhattan Company was founded by Aaron Burr in 1799; the Bank of New York and Hamilton vigorously opposed its founding.
During the 19th century, the bank was known for its conservative lending practices that allowed it to weather financial crises. It was involved in the funding of the Morris and Erie canals, and steamboat companies. The bank helped finance both the War of 1812 and the Union Army during the American Civil War. Following the Civil War, the bank loaned money to many major infrastructure projects, including utilities, railroads, and the New York City Subway.
Through the early 20th century, the Bank of New York continued to expand and prosper. In July 1922, the bank merged with the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company. The bank continued to profit and pay dividends throughout the Great Depression, and its total deposits increased during the decade. In 1948, the bank again merged, this time with the Fifth Avenue Bank, which was followed by a merger in 1966 with the Empire Trust Company. The bank's holding company was created in 1969.
Read the full text
In 1988, the Bank of New York merged with Irving Bank Corporation after a year-long takeover bid by Bank of New York. Irving had been headquartered at 1 Wall Street and after the merger, this became the headquarters of the Bank of New York on July 20, 1988.
From 1993 to 1998, the bank made 33 acquisitions, including acquiring JP Morgan's Global Custody Business in 1995. Ivy Asset Management was acquired in 2000.
In the 1990s, Vladimir Kirillovich Golitsyn or "Mickey" Galitzine established and headed the Eastern European Department at the Bank of New York until 1992 and hired many Russians. He mentored many new bankers in Hungary, the former East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria and travelled extensively to capital cities in the former Soviet Union or the CIS to assist new bankers especially in Russia to where he travelled for his first time in 1990, Ukraine, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Bank of New York had correspondent accounts for several Russian banks including Inkombank (Russian: Инкомбанк), Menatep (Russian: «Менатеп»), Tokobank (Russian: Токобанк), Tveruniversalbank (Russian: Тверьуниверсалбанк), Alfa-Bank (Russian: Альфа-банк), Sobinbank (Russian: Собинбанк), Moscow International Bank (Russian: Московский международный банк) and others.
In October 2002, Bank of New York entered into an alliance with ING to gain a stronger footing in Eastern European markets.
In 2003, Bank of New York acquired Pershing LLC, the stock clearing unit of Credit Suisse First Boston for $2 billion. The Pershing acquisition made BNY the nation's largest clearing firm for stock trades. EMAT and the wealth management firm Lockwood Financial Partners, which was originally formed as Lockwood Advisors in 1995 and was based in Malvern, Pennsylvania, specialised in providing independent financial investment advisory services to brokers of high-net-worth individuals; it went on to become one of the largest independent advisory companies in the United States before both firms were sold to the Bank of New York in 2002, while Gerald L Hassell was president of Bank of New York. Lockwood and Pershing LLC were folded into the BNY Securities Group under the Pershing umbrella in October 2003, with Joseph M. Velli heading the BNY Securities Group. It allowed Bank of New York to compete against U.S. Trust, J.P. Morgan Chase, as well as those more brokerage-oriented organizations for private banking clients.
In 2005, the bank paid a $14 million settlement to the Russian government concerning the money laundering activities of a rogue employee in the 1990s. This scandal has sometimes been called Russiagate.
In 2006, the Bank of New York traded its retail banking and regional middle-market businesses for J.P. Morgan Chase's corporate trust assets. The deal signaled the bank's exit from retail banking.
Mellon Financial
Mellon Financial was founded as T. Mellon & Sons' Bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1869 by retired judge Thomas Mellon and his sons Andrew W. Mellon and Richard B. Mellon. The bank invested in and helped found numerous industrial firms in the late 1800s and early 1900s including Alcoa, Westinghouse, Gulf Oil, General Motors and Bethlehem Steel. Both Gulf Oil and Alcoa are, according to the financial media, considered to be T. Mellon & Sons' most successful financial investments.
In 1902, T. Mellon & Sons' name was changed to the Mellon National Bank. In 1946, the firm merged with the Union Trust Company, a business founded by Andrew Mellon in 1899, and other affiliated financial firms. The newly formed organization was named the Mellon National Bank and Trust Company, and was Pittsburgh's first US$1 billion bank.
The bank formed the first dedicated family office in the United States in 1971. A reorganization in 1972 led to the bank's name changing to Mellon Bank, N.A. and the formation of a holding company, Mellon National Corporation.
Mellon Bank acquired multiple banks and financial institutions in Pennsylvania during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, Mellon acquired 54 branch offices of Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, the first savings bank in the United States, founded in 1819.
In 1993, Mellon acquired The Boston Company from American Express and AFCO Credit Corporation from The Continental Corporation. The following year, Mellon merged with the Dreyfus Corporation, bringing its mutual funds under its umbrella. In 1999, Mellon Bank Corporation became Mellon Financial Corporation. Two years later, it exited the retail banking business by selling its assets and retail bank branches to Citizens Financial Group.
Merger
On December 4, 2006, the Bank of New York and Mellon Financial Corporation announced they would merge. The merger created the world's largest securities servicing company and one of the largest asset management firms by combining Mellon's wealth-management business and the Bank of New York's asset-servicing and short-term-lending specialties. The companies anticipated saving about $700 million in costs and cutting around 3,900 jobs, mostly by attrition.
The deal was valued at $16.5 billion and under its terms, the Bank of New York's shareholders received 0.9434 shares in the new company for each share of the Bank of New York that they owned, while Mellon Financial shareholders received 1 share in the new company for each Mellon share they owned. The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial entered into mutual stock option agreements for 19.9 percent of the issuer's outstanding common stock. The merger was finalized on July 1, 2007. The company's principal office of business was located at the One Wall Street office previously held by the Bank of New York. The full name of the company became The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., with the BNY Mellon brand name being used for most lines of business.
Post-merger history
In October 2008, the U.S. Treasury named BNY Mellon the master custodian of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout fund during the 2008 financial crisis. BNY Mellon won the assignment, which included handling accounting and record-keeping for the program, through a bidding process. In November 2008, the company announced that it would lay-off 1,800 employees, or 4% of its global workforce, due to the 2008 financial crisis. According to the results of a February 2009 stress test conducted by federal regulators, BNY Mellon was one of only three banks that could withstand a worsening economic situation. The company received $3 billion from TARP, which it paid back in full in June 2009, along with US$136 million to buy back warrants from the Treasury in August 2009.
In August 2009, BNY Mellon purchased Insight Investment, a management business, from Lloyds Banking Group. The company acquired PNC Financial Services' Global Investment Servicing Inc. in July 2010 and Talon Asset Management's wealth management business in 2011.
By 2013, the company's capital had steadily recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. In the results of the Federal Reserve's Dodd-Frank stress test in 2013, the bank was least affected by hypothetical extreme economic scenarios among banks tested. It was also a top performer on the same test in 2014.
BNY Mellon began a marketing campaign in 2013 to increase awareness of the company that included a new slogan and logo.
In 2013, the bank started building a new IT system called NEXEN. NEXEN uses open source technology and includes components such as an API store, data analytics, and a cloud computing environment.
In May 2014, BNY Mellon moved its global headquarters from 1 Wall Street to Brookfield Place, following the sale of the former building. In June 2014, the company combined its global markets, global collateral services and prime services to create the new Markets Group, also known as BNY Markets Mellon. The company expanded its Hong Kong office in October 2014 as part of the company's plans to grow its wealth management business.
Between 2014 and 2016, BNY Mellon opened innovation centers focused on emerging technologies, big data, digital and cloud-based projects, with the first opening in Silicon Valley.
In September 2017, BNY Mellon announced that it agreed to sell CenterSquare Investment Management to its management team and the private equity firm Lovell Minnick Partners. The transaction is subject to standard regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.
In November 2017, BNY Mellon performed the United States banking industry's first real-time payment transaction using a system set up by The Clearing House. The transaction moved a nominal amount between accounts at BNY Mellon and U.S. Bancorp in three seconds, inaugurating the first new payment clearance and settlement system for the US in over 40 years.
In January 2018, BNY Mellon announced that it was again moving its headquarters location, less than four years after its prior move. The headquarters location was announced as 240 Greenwich Street, a renaming of the already BNY Mellon-owned 101 Barclay Street office building in Tribeca, New York City. BNY Mellon had owned the office building for over 30 years, with control of the location obtained via 99-year ground lease. The same year, the company purchased the location from the city for $352 million.
In February 2020, Mellon announced that it has successfully onboarded Liontrust Asset Management to its new Investment Operations platform.
In early 2023, BNY Mellon's Pershing unit announced the addition of real-time payments to its investor portal. In June 2023, BNY Mellon's Pershing X launched wealth management platform Wove. In July 2023, BNY Mellon became an early adopter of Federal Reserve's instant payment rail, FedNow. That same year, BNY made history by selecting minority-, veteran-, and woman-owned firms as bookrunners for a $500 million debt offering. Additionally, the company increased its minimum wage for U.S.-based employees by 12.5%, raising the hourly rate from $20.00 to $22.50, and expanded its mental health resources.
In June 2024, BNY Mellon announced an update to its logo and a simplification of its corporate brand to BNY. As part of this rebranding, BNY Mellon Investment Management was renamed BNY Investments, BNY Mellon Wealth Management became BNY Wealth, and BNY Mellon Pershing was shortened to BNY Pershing.
In mid-2025, it was reported that BNY approached Northern Trust about the possibility of a merger. The firms had conversations but BNY's CEO declined to comment publicly, stating focus remains on "organic growth".
In April 2026, the US Treasury announced that BNY would be designated as a financial agent to manage initial Trump accounts, while also partnering with Robinhood to develop an app and provide customer service.
In May 2026, the company changed its stock ticker symbol from BK to BNY on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
From Wikipedia’s article on BNY, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8