Nbd history

To motivate employees the First began awarding bonuses for 'able and meritorious' effort; in 1881 the bank distributed $20,000 as incentives to employees.

During the Panic of 1893, the First found an original solution for the currency shortage: it imported gold from its London correspondent bank, a practice that quickly spread to other banks.

When it joined with the Union National Bank in 1900, the First's assets climbed from $56 million to $76 million.

At the turn of the century, the industrial revolution created an unprecedented demand for credit. It combined with the Metropolitan National Bank in 1902 and raised its assets to $100 million.

The First celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1913 by becoming a charter member of the Federal Reserve system.

CNB, formed from the consolidation of two small Columbus banks, had an infamous anniversary: October 29, 1929, Black Friday.

Revitalization of the system would come only with the help of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), a United States government agency created in 1932 to assist financially troubled banks, railroads, and other businesses.

The Michigan action was soon adopted in other states, and, on March 5, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the newly elected president, ordered the closure of all banks across the nation.

When the Securities and Exchange Commission was established in 1934, fears of a second crash dissipated.

In 1938, on its 75th birthday, the First's assets reached the $1 billion mark, just as the American economy began to accelerate in anticipation of war.

The bank also opened its first drive-in window office in 1941.

In 1942, Charles T. Fisher, Jr., the bank's president, took a leave of absence to become a director of the RFC, which was then involved in financing war production.

In 1944 President Roosevelt chose the First's president, Edward Eagle Brown, to be the only American banker to serve at the United Nations Monetary and Finance Conference that met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to sketch plans for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In 1948, the bank also became the first in the country to sell ten million United States savings bonds.

Free from its two founders, NBD would continue to grow with the postwar economic boom, with assets reaching $1.4 billion by 1950.

When John H. McCoy suffered a fifth heart attack and died in November 1958, CNB was still ranked third among the banks in Columbus.

In 1959, NBD moved its headquarters across the street to a newly built downtown office building designed by the noted industrial architect Albert Khan.

Moreover, Fisher, a former disc jockey, cultivated a unique image for the bank when he hired comedienne Phyllis Diller as CNB's spokesperson in 1962.

At his and McCoy's instigation, CNB became the first bank outside of California to market Bankamericard (which later became Visa) in 1966, beginning a very profitable credit card processing sideline.

In July 1967, race riots flared across the city, causing extensive property damage and bringing the city's economy to a virtual standstill.

When Homer Livingston passed leadership of the bank to Gaylord Freeman in 1969, an attitude of unrestrained optimism pervaded at the First.

A. Robert Abboud replaced Freeman in 1975 and immediately began dealing with First Chicago's bad loans.

Unfortunately, this program produced one of the worst loan portfolios in the industry: in 1976 the bank's percentage of non-performing loans reached a high of 11 percent--twice the national average.

In 1978 Abboud more than doubled the bank's Eurodollar commitment, to $6.7 billion, from $3.1 billion the year before.

By mid-1979, with interest rates on the verge of a historic climb, First Chicago found itself with $1 billion in fixed-rate loans that were being funded by short-term money whose cost was quickly rising above the yields of the loans.

In 1980 the bank opened a representative office in Beijing, the first American bank to open such an office in China.

In 1981, the holding company was renamed NBD Bancorp, Inc.

First Chicago caught the attention of Wall Street; at the end of 1983, three and a half years after Sullivan became chairman, First Chicago's stock reached $24 a share, double its price when Sullivan took over.

In October 1984, the comptroller of the currency examined First Chicago's loan portfolio.

By the end of 1985, First Chicago had written off $131.1 million on its Brazilian fiasco.

In 1986, NBD Bancorp began purchasing smaller bank holding companies in Indiana and Illinois, forming a ring of financial institutions around Lake Michigan.

In 1987, for example, the company purchased the $4.4 billion American Fletcher of Indianapolis, and the next year it acquired $4.3 billion Marine Corp. of Milwaukee.

In 1988, after a little more than two years of acquiring out-of-state banks, the company saw its Detroit area deposits drop to just 61.4 percent of the total.

Focusing on Texas, the nation's third largest bank state with $175 billion in deposits in 1990, McCoy found a retail void in the banking market that could be filled by his bank's successful formula.

Sullivan left the company at the end of 1991, and new Chairman and CEO Richard L. Thomas assumed the task of turning the around the ailing bank.

NBD Bancorp's out-of-state forays were greatest in Indiana, where in 1992, for example, it purchased INB Financial Corp. of Indianapolis, a holding company with assets of $6.6 billion, six separate banks, and 124 offices.

The bank was also able to take some control of its problem loans by selling off $1 billion of its nonperforming real estate loans to GE Capital in February 1993 for about $500 million.

By mid-1994, assets had reached $45.2 billion, making NBD the 18th largest bank holding company in the United States.

In 1995 First Chicago made a big move when it merged with NBD Bancorp Inc., based in Detroit, Michigan, to form First Chicago NBD Corp., the seventh largest bank in the United States and a leader in the Midwest.

Problems continued to plague Bank One in early 2000 as it struggled to turn around its underperforming operations.

The company was founded on October 16, 2007 and is headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.“