The Bank of New York was co-founded in 1784 by none other than the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) is the result of the merging of that firm and T. Mellon and Sons, a Pittsburgh institution that financed the steel and fuel industries. This long history makes BNY Mellon the oldest Read more...

With $311 trillion in assets, TD Bank is also the combination of several banks. Over the years, it has gone by the name Portland Savings Bank, Banknorth and now TD Bank. In 2008, it acquired Commerce Bank and then merged with Canadian TD Banknorth. The TD in TD Bank actually stands for Toronto-Dominion. Though its parent company is Canadian, the Read more...

Capital One is primarily a retail banking operation, providing credit cards, auto loans and home loans in addition to checking and savings services. Originally a pure credit card company, Capital One expanded into banking in earnest in 2005. Early in 2014 Capital One was criticized for changing its customer terms of service to allow the bank to contact customers in Read more...

Pittsburgh-based PNC is a regional financial institution operating mostly on the East Coast. With 2,380 branches in 19 states and Washington, DC, the bank has nearly $397 billion in total assets. An acronym for two different banks, PNC stands for both Pittsburgh National Corporation and Providence National Corporation. When the two Pennsylvania banks merged to form the beginnings of the Read more...

Fifth on the list, U.S. Bank, which is part of U.S. Bancorp, has more than $477 billion in consolidated assets. With headquarters in Minneapolis, the bank largely operates in the the Midwest and West. It has 2,914 domestic branches. The current bank is the result of many mergers and acquisitions of major regional banks, including Old National Bank, Heritage Bank, Read more...

A pioneer of both the credit card industry and automated teller machines, Citibank – formerly the City Bank of New York – was regarded as an East Coast equivalent to Wells Fargo during the 19th century when both banks were purely regional. With its expansion to Argentina in 1914, Citibank was also the first U.S. bank to open a banking Read more...

Following a merger with Norwest Corporation in 1998 and an acquisition of Wachovia National Bank in 2008, Wells Fargo is the fourth largest bank in the country. Going by number of branches, though, it is the largest, with 5,486. Its parent financial services company has headquarters in San Francisco, while the bank’s main office is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Read more...

With $1.8 trillion in consolidated assets, Bank of America is second on the list. Its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, singlehandedly makes that city one of the biggest financial centers in the country. Though it is not the largest bank, this company is in fact the world’s largest wealth management firm, because it owns Merrill Lynch, a giant in that Read more...

At the top of the list, JPMorgan-Chase holds almost $2.4 trillion in worldwide assets. This makes it the largest bank in the country – and the sixth-largest in the world. The company is the result of the 2000 merger of J.P. Morgan and Company and Chase Manhattan Corporation. While the J.P. Morgan name is used for investment banking and private Read more...