Bank One Merger Helps JPMorgan Chase in Treasury Services

When Chase Bank merged with JPMorgan in 2001, much of the overlap was in their respective investment banks. Thus, it has been quite a while since the Treasury Services division at JPMorgan Chase has gone through a merger.

Prior to 2004's merger with Bank One, the last such event for bank veterans was the 1996 merger between Chase Manhattan Bank and Chemical Bank. "It wasn't on the same order of magnitude," relates Marcie Haitema, senior vice president, Global ACH operations executive, JPMorgan Chase (New York, $1.16 trillion in assets).

This time around, the Treasury Services organization has been in the center of organizational changes and has come out on top. "We're still winning big deals, and we're still growing organically at a tremendous clip," says Haitema. "We've been able to get our business done internally, so to speak, without losing sight of our customers."

Bank One's commercial customer base included a greater number of smaller customers than that of JPMorgan Chase. "Because of the bank presence of 'heritage' Bank One, they had very big and deep middle-market and small-business relationships, which doesn't overlap at all with ['heritage' JPMorgan's] large corporates," says Haitema. "When you get to the large corporates and financial institutions, even there, there's some overlap. But from a strategic point of view, we faced that head-on and started the dialogue with clients so that they could get a comfort level with our combined capability."

For instance, Bank One brought its strengths in retail lockbox to the merger, which allows the bank to approach 'heritage' JPMorgan Chase customers with a service that had not been available previously, according to Haitema.

The JPMorgan Chase now offers "the whole nine yards" for its treasury customers, says Haitema, from credit and M&A advice to trade services and cash management.