Maximum Strength Changes for Bank One

By Matt Wood in News on Oct 21, 2005 4:11PM

Bank One officially changes its name to Chase in Illinois on Monday, but they haven't really been sneaky about it. The bank announced that all Bank One consumer operations would be renamed to Chase immediately after the merger with JPMorgan last year, and they've slowly been co-branding the Bank One website, advertising, and credit cards with the Chase logo. Just this week we noticed many Bank One branches had already changed their signage, including the big one atop the bank's headquarters in the Loop. The building formerly known as Bank One Plaza will now be called Chase Tower.

The changes seem to signal significant progress in the bank's business. This week they posted 78 percent jump in third quarter earnings, and announced that Jamie Dimon, the bank's Chief Operating Officer and former Bank One CEO, will succeed JPMorgan's William Harrison six months earlier than expected.

Chicagoist resisted the urge to get huffy over yet another mega-corporation stealing the identify of a Chicago company, because we reminded ourselves that Bank One wasn't exactly an institution here. This is their third name change in ten years, after First Chicago merged with NBD in 1995, then again with Banc One in 1998. Plus it's hard to get sentimental over the same fuckers who charge us $1.50 to withdraw OUR OWN MONEY from an ATM.