Nehemiah Corporation of America
Nehemiah Corporation of America is a non-profit organization based in Sacramento, California specializing in homeownership, affordable housing and community development. It started in 1994 as a small organization, but grew to prominence later in the 1990s after it developed a program that allowed home buyers to make down payments on their purchases using funds that were derived from the home sellers. This program, the Nehemiah Program, became popular and was widely emulated, giving birth to what came to be known as the seller-funded down-payment assistance industry. The industry attracted criticism from U.S. federal agencies (particularly the Government Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service) and was ultimately shut down in 2008 by a change in federal law.
Wachovia
By the 1990s, it had grown into a Southern regional powerhouse in a strategy mirroring its longtime rival on Tryon Street in Charlotte, NCNB (later NationsBank and now Bank of America). In 1995, however, it acquired First Fidelity Bancorporation of Newark, New Jersey; at one stroke becoming a major player in the Northeast. Its Northeastern footprint grew even larger in 1998, when it acquired CoreStates Financial Corporation of Philadelphia. One of CoreStates' predecessors, the Bank of North America, had been the first bank proposed, chartered and incorporated in America on December 31, 1781. A former Bank of North America branch in Philadelphia remains in operation today as a Wells Fargo branch