America's biggest bank started as Aaron Burr's water company loophole
In 1799 Aaron Burr slipped an innocent-sounding clause into the charter of a company meant to bring clean water to New York, letting it invest spare capital in any lawful business. Within six months, before laying any pipe, it opened a bank. That bank's descendant is JPMorgan Chase, the largest in the United States.
Founding a bank back then required a special act of the state legislature, which made charters deeply political. Burr, Alexander Hamilton's rival and eventual killer, used the water charter to get around that. The Bank of the Manhattan Company, established on September 1, 1799, later bought Chase National Bank in 1955 to form Chase Manhattan, which David Rockefeller built into a powerhouse during the 1970s and 1980s.
Another strand began with a chemical maker. The New York Chemical Manufacturing Company, founded in 1823, amended its charter the next year to go into banking. Chemical Bank bought Chase Manhattan in 1996 but kept the more famous Chase name, and today's firm still carries Chemical's old stock price history and its headquarters site at 270 Park Avenue.
The third line is the House of Morgan. J.P. Morgan & Co. financed the creation of U.S. Steel, the world's first billion-dollar corporation, and in 1895 supplied the federal government with $62 million in gold. On September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded outside its 23 Wall Street headquarters, killing 38 people; the case was never solved. When the Glass–Steagall Act forced banks to split commercial and investment work in the 1930s, the firm stayed a commercial bank, and partners spun off Morgan Stanley in 1935.
The pieces came together in 2000 when J.P. Morgan merged with Chase Manhattan. Bank One arrived in 2004, bringing Jamie Dimon, and the bank later absorbed the assets of collapsed firms including Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. It now holds about $4 trillion in assets, runs the largest investment bank by revenue, and topped the Forbes Global 2000 for a fourth straight year in 2026.
Source: JPMorgan Chase
