---
title: "Chemical Banking → Chase Manhattan"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/chase-manhattan-buy-chemical-banking-1995"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "1995"
---

# Chemical Banking → Chase Manhattan

The all-share merger of Chemical Banking and Chase Manhattan, agreed in August 1995 and valued at about $10bn, created the largest bank in the United States with roughly $300bn of assets; Chemical was the legal survivor, but the combined bank took the better-known Chase name.

Created the largest US bank by assets at the time and set off a decade of domestic bank consolidation.

- **Acquirer:** Chemical Banking (United States)
- **Target:** Chase Manhattan (United States)
- **Value:** $10B
- **Announced:** August 1995
- **Completed:** March 1996
- **Sector:** Banking
- **Deal type:** merger

## Why it mattered

Both were New York money-centre banks. Chase, once the country's largest bank, had been weakened by the real-estate collapse of the early 1990s and had slipped to sixth; Chemical, which had absorbed Manufacturers Hanover in 1991, was third, with $182.9bn of assets. In 1995 Michael Price's Mutual Series funds bought 6.1% of Chase and pressed it to sell businesses or find a buyer.

The agreement, approved by both boards on 27 August and announced the next day, exchanged 1.04 Chemical shares for each Chase share in a tax-free pooling of interests. Chemical's Walter Shipley would be chairman and chief executive and Chase's Thomas Labrecque president. The banks promised $1.5bn a year of cost savings within three years — about 16% of combined operating expenses — including the loss of some 12,000 of 75,000 jobs, and projected a $1.5bn pre-tax merger charge. The holding companies merged on 31 March 1996: Chase Manhattan was folded into Chemical Banking Corporation, which renamed itself The Chase Manhattan Corporation, reported $300bn of assets and $20bn of equity, and planned to merge the two flagship banks later that year. Chase's name was kept because it was better known, particularly outside the United States.

## What it left behind

JPMorgan Chase was assembled on this base. The new Chase bought Hambrecht & Quist for $1.35bn in 1999 and Robert Fleming for $7.7bn in 2000, then took over J.P. Morgan & Co. in December 2000; Bank One followed in 2004, bringing Jamie Dimon. Chemical's management team, led by Shipley and later William Harrison, ran the bank through each of these deals, and JPMorgan Chase still carries Chemical's pre-1996 share-price history and its old headquarters site at 270 Park Avenue, where a new tower opened in October 2025. In 2026 the group had about $4tn of assets. The case shows that the brand and the control of a merged bank can come from different partners: Chemical supplied the corporate entity and the managers, Chase the name that customers abroad recognised.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Bank