List of oldest banks in continuous operation
Depending on the definition, the world's oldest bank is either Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena or Berenberg Bank. Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena was founded in its present form in 1624, but traces its history to a mount of piety founded in 1472. The Berenberg company was founded in 1590 and has operated continuously ever since with the same family as owners or major co-owners. Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena is today a large Italian retail bank, while Berenberg Bank is primarily involved in investment banking and private banking for wealthy customers; in any event Berenberg Bank is the world's oldest merchant bank or investment bank. The world's oldest central bank is the Sveriges Riksbank, which was founded in 1668.
CoreStates Financial Corporation
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), 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 Nank 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.