Manufacturers Hanover Corporation

Manufacturers Hanover Corporation was an American bank holding company that was formed as parent of Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company (MHT or, informally, Manny Hanny), a large New York City bank formed through a merger in 1961 with ancestor companies, especially the Manufacturers Trust Company, having had a long history in New York banking going back to the 1850s. After 1969, Manufacturers Hanover Trust became a subsidiary of Manufacturers Hanover Corporation. Throughout most of its existence, Manufacturers Hanover Trust was the fourth-largest bank in the United States.

MHT was both a major money center bank and heavily engaged in retail banking. As such, the bank was known for stability and was well established via its personal accounts base tied to New York branch locations as well as in having a number of large blue-chip corporate customers. It ran several memorable advertising campaigns in the 1970s and also had some prominent sports sponsorship arrangements. Over time it gained substantial operations in other parts of the United States as well as overseas.

But by the late 1980s, Manufacturers Hanover had fallen in rank among American banks and was troubled by a number of bad loans, especially ones in Latin America. In 1991 it merged into Chemical Banking Corporation and within a couple of years had disappeared under its name. However it continued to have an influence via some of its executives, internal systems, and its presence at 270 Park Avenue which successor corporations down to JPMorgan Chase continued to locate their headquarters in.

The roots of Manufacturers Hanover have been traced as far back as 1812, when the New York Manufacturing Co. was founded with a charter that included banking authority.

Commonly, however, the history of the Manufacturers Trust line is considered to have started in 1853. That is when the Mechanics' Bank of Williamsburgh was created, in what was then the City of Williamsburgh, a couple of years before its incorporation into Brooklyn. It mainly serviced business customers in the Second Ward of Williamsburgh, and was considered small in size. According to one account in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the bank's directors were ex-officials of Williamsburgh.

In 1858, the bank changed its name to the Manufacturers' Bank of Brooklyn. Then in 1865, it changed from being a state-chartered bank to a national bank, moved its offices to Lower Manhattan, and took the name Manufacturers National Bank of New York. But the year 1867 saw it foundering financially and it soon returned to Brooklyn. It took the name Manufacturers National Bank of Brooklyn in 1868, at which name it stayed into the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, the Citizens Trust Company of Brooklyn had been formed in 1905. Citizens Trust's first acquisition came with its merger with the Broadway Bank of Brooklyn in 1912. Then in 1914, the Manufacturers National Bank and the Citizens Trust Company merged to become the Manufacturers-Citizens Trust Company, with directors and officers of both banks having similar positions in the new entity and the resulting combination becoming the largest bank in the Eastern District of Brooklyn. Some sources view Citizens Trust to have been the surviving company in this merger, and for that reason trace the Manufacturers Trust line back only as far as 1905, while others, as stated, consider the line to go back to 1853.

In any case, the new entity had its headquarters at the 774–776 address on Broadway (Brooklyn). The following year, the merged bank's name was simplified to the Manufacturers Trust Company. (Coincidentally, Manufacturers Trust Company had also been the name of a different Brooklyn-based bank, founded in 1896 and acquired in 1902 by the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, also located in Brooklyn.) It would stay under the Manufacturers Trust Company name for the next forty-six years.