Who Owns Chase?

The Chase brand carries one of the oldest lineages in American banking. Its two principal ancestors are The Bank of The Manhattan Company, founded in 1799 by Aaron Burr, and Chase National Bank, founded in 1877 by John Thompson. Thompson named the bank after Salmon P. Chase, who served as Treasury Secretary under Abraham Lincoln and helped create the national banking system.

Chase National Bank grew into one of the largest banks in the country through the early twentieth century, completing a series of mergers in the 1920s and 1930s that made it, for a time, the largest bank in the world. In 1955, Chase National Bank merged with The Bank of The Manhattan Company to form Chase Manhattan Bank. The merged institution became a dominant force in consumer and commercial banking in New York and expanded nationally over the following decades.

In 1996, Chemical Banking Corporation acquired Chase Manhattan in what was then the largest bank merger in U.S. history. Although Chemical was the acquiring company, it adopted the Chase Manhattan name because the Chase brand carried greater consumer recognition. Four years later, on December 31, 2000, Chase Manhattan Corporation merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. to form JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The modern Chase retail footprint was built largely through acquisitions. The 2004 purchase of Bank One added a massive credit card business and branches across the Midwest and South, and brought Jamie Dimon to the firm. The 2008 acquisition of Washington Mutual, the largest bank failure in U.S. history, added hundreds of branches on the West Coast and made Chase a national consumer bank overnight.

From 2018 onward, Chase shifted from buying branch networks to building them. The bank has opened more than 1,000 new branches since 2018, more than all large bank peers combined. In 2021, Chase became the first and remains the only U.S. bank with branches in all 48 contiguous states. In 2023, JPMorgan Chase acquired the failed First Republic Bank and folded its wealth management and private banking clients into J.P. Morgan branded operations.

In February 2026, JPMorgan Chase announced plans to open more than 160 new branches in over 30 states during the year, part of a three-year plan to open more than 500 branches, renovate 1,700 locations, and hire 3,500 employees. On January 7, 2026, the firm announced that Chase will become the new issuer of the Apple Card, acquiring the portfolio from Goldman Sachs under a forward purchase commitment expected to close about 24 months after December 30, 2025.