Philadelphia National Bank

<p>CoreStates Financial Corporation, previously known as Philadelphia National Bank (PNB), was a United States bank holding company in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area.</p>

<p>The bank was renamed in the mid-1980s after a series of mergers. After being acquired by First Union Corporation, which later merged with Wachovia National Bank, CoreStates Financial Corporation became a part of Wells Fargo in 2008 when Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo.</p>

<p>The bank was founded in Philadelphia on September 8, 1803, as The Philadelphia Bank. George Clymer was the bank's first president. Later, the bank became known as Philadelphia National Bank, or PNB.</p>

<p>During the early years of the United States, Philadelphia developed as the banking center of the country. The First Bank of the United States chartered in 1791, was based in the city until its charter expired in 1811 and was purchased by Stephen Girard and then renamed Girard Bank for its founder. The Second Bank of the United States was directed for most of the period 1816 to 1836 by Nicholas Biddle, the nation's first chief banker and scion of the city's most iconic family.</p>

<p>The Philadelphia National Bank was neither the oldest nor the most aggressive of the big banks headquartered in the nation's birthplace for most of the city's history. That distinction went to the First Pennsylvania Bank, the "Pennsy Company." While founded as an insurance company in 1809 (chartered 1812),[1] it traces back to an even earlier banking dynasty. the Bank of North America was chartered in 1781 by the Continental Congress as America's first bank. It went through a number of charter changes and minor upheavals until merging with the Commercial Trust Company to form 1923's Bank of North America and Trust Company. That didn't survive long; by the 1870s, 1st Pennsy had transitioned to banking in the 1870s, and it bought the old bank in 1929, and shortly thereafter renamed itself the Pennsylvania Company for Banking and Trust. It was led in the twentieth century by an increasingly ambitious and risk-taking board of directors. Another merger with First National Bank in 1955 brought another name change, prepending "First," and the First National branch at 315 Chestnut Street was maintained until the Wells Fargo period. Serendipitously, 315 Chestnut is next door to the original location of the Bank of North America at 305 Chestnut.[2]</p>

<p>PNB, on the other hand, maintained a reputation for financial caution and civic responsibility. On occasion, the bank made headlines for quiet innovations, such as when during the late 1960s it led all the nation's banks in ending the practice of "redlining" poorer neighborhoods so that personal and small business loans could be extended to residents of poorer city districts, or when, during the middle 1970s, the bank helped universalize ATM banking by building one of the nation's first and largest network of banking machines, known by their acronym, "MAC", for Money Access Center or Money Access Card.</p>

<p>By the dawn of the new age of banking in the late 1970s and 1980s, when lending grew highly competitive and banks began vying for power and influence by buying each other, PNB was well positioned to compete. It maintained offices in all of the major financial capitals of the world with headquarters of its subsidiary, Philadelphia International Bank (PIB), in London and New York City, through its practice of Correspondent banking. PNB was particularly aggressive in the then-developing Middle East oil-rich states. The real estate bust of the late 1970s, accompanied by high interest rates and rates of foreclosure, did not hurt PNB to the extent it did its more highly exposed crosstown rival, First Pennsylvania, which never completely recovered from the temporary collapse of the real estate investment trust (REIT) industry and was eventually purchased by PNB in 1990.</p>