Bank of New-York - 1829 dated Check - Very Historic

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Relating to the Bank of New York, the first bank in the U.S. was the Bank of North America in Philadelphia, which was chartered by the Continental Congress in 1781; Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were among its founding shareholders. In February 1784, The Massachusetts Bank in Boston was chartered.

The shipping industry in New York City chafed under the lack of a bank, and investors envied the 14% dividends that Bank of North America paid, and months of local discussion culminated in a June 1784 meeting at a coffee house on St. George's Square which led to the formation of the Bank of New York company; it operated without a charter for seven years. The initial plan was to capitalize the company with $750,000, a third in cash and the rest in mortgages, but after this was disputed the first offering was to capitalize it with $500,000 in gold or silver. When the bank opened on June 9, 1784, the full $500,000 had not been raised; 723 shares had been sold, held by 192 people. Aaron Burr had three of them, and Hamilton had one and a half shares. The first president was Alexander McDougall and the Cashier was William Seton.

Its first offices were in the old Walton Mansion in New York City. In 1787, it moved to a site on Hanover Square that the New York Cotton Exchange later moved into.

The bank provided the United States government its first loan in 1789. The loan was orchestrated by Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, and it paid the salaries of United States Congress members and President George Washington.

The Bank of New York was the first company to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange when it first opened in 1792. In 1796, the bank moved to a location at the corner of Wall Street and William Street, which would later become 48 Wall Street.

The bank had a monopoly on banking services in the city until the Bank of the Manhattan Company was founded by Aaron Burr in 1799; the Bank of New York and Hamilton vigorously opposed its founding.

During the 19th century, the bank was known for its conservative lending practices that allowed it to weather financial crises. It was involved in the funding of the Morris and Erie canals, and steamboat companies. The bank helped finance both the War of 1812 and the Union Army during the American Civil War. Following the Civil War, the bank loaned money to many major infrastructure projects, including utilities, railroads, and the New York City Subway.

Through the early 20th century, the Bank of New York continued to expand and prosper. In July 1922, the bank merged with the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company. The bank continued to profit and pay dividends throughout the Great Depression, and its total deposits increased during the decade. In 1948, the Bank again merged, this time with the Fifth Avenue Bank, which was followed by a merger in 1966 with the Empire Trust Company. The bank's holding company was created in 1969.

In 1988, the Bank of New York merged with Irving Bank Corporation after a year-long hostile take over bid by Bank of New York. Irving had been headquartered at 1 Wall Street and after the merger, this became the headquarters of the Bank of New York on July 20, 1998. In 1922, Irving Trust opened an account with Vnesheconombank, now known as VEB, and beginning on October 7, 1988, when the merger was approved, the Bank of New York was able to conduct transactions with the Soviet Union and later in 1991 Russia. Natasha Kagalovsky (née Gurfinkel) with the pseudonym Gurova, who had been an employee at Irving Trust since 1986 and was in charge of the banking with the Soviet Union, became a senior vice president at the Bank of New York heading the Eastern European operations from 1992 until October 13, 1999, when she resigned.

From 1993 to 1998, the bank made 33 acquisitions, including acquiring JP Morgan's Global Custody Business in 1995. Ivy Asset Management was acquired in 2000, and the bank acquired Pershing LLC, the United States' second-largest trade clearinghouse, in 2003.

In the 1990s, Vladimir Kirillovich Golitsyn or "Mickey" Galitzine (Russian: Владимир Кириллович Голицын; 1942-2018, born Belgrade) with the pseudonym Vladimirov, whose father was a director of the Tolstoy Foundation, established and headed the Eastern European Department at the Bank of New York until 1992 and hired many Russians. He mentored many new bankers in Hungary, the former East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria and travelled extensively to capital cities in the former Soviet Union or the CIS to assist new bankers especially in Russia to where he travelled for his first time in 1990, Ukraine, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. In 1960, he joined the Bank of New York and worked as an accountant in its International Department but later headed the Russia team as a vice president of the bank. His wife Tatiana Vladimirovna Kazimirova (Russian: Татьяна Владимировна Казимирова; b. 1943, Berlin), an employee at the Bank of New York whom he married in 1963, worked very closely with him. He traveled for his first time to Russia in 1990. He worked closely with banks in Greece, Malta, and Italy and was an expert in cotton, gold, silver, and other raw materials financing.

Bank of New York had correspondent accounts for several Russian banks including Inkombank (Russian: Инкомбанк), Menatep (Russian: «Менатеп»), Tokobank (Russian: Токобанк), Tveruniversalbank (Russian: Тверьуниверсалбанк), Alfa-Bank (Russian: Альфа-банк), Sobinbank (Russian: Собинбанк), Moscow International Bank (Russian: Московский международный банк) and others.

In 2005, the bank settled a US federal investigation that began in 1996 concerning money laundering related to post-Soviet privatization in Russia. The illegal operation involved two Russian emigres, Peter Berlin and his wife Lyudmila "Lucy" (née Pritzker) Edwards who was a Vice President of the bank and worked at its London office, moving over US$7 billion via hundreds of wires. Through accounts created by Peter Berlin for Alexei Volkov's Torfinex Corportion, Bees Lowland, which was an offshore shell company created by Peter Berlin, and Benex International Company Inc, numerous irregular wire transfers occurred at the Bank of New York. In October 1997 at Bologna, Joseph Roisis, also spelled Yosif Aronovizh Roizis and nicknamed Cannibal as a member of Russian mafia's Solntsevskaya Bratva with businesses in Czechoslovakia, explained to Italian prosecutors that 90% of the money flowing through Benex accounts at the Bank of New York is Russian mafia money. Alexei Volkov was charged in the United States but fled to Russia which has no extradition treaty with the United States and later the charges were dropped. Svetlana Kudryavtsev, a Bank of New York employee that was responsible for the proper operation of the Benex accounts in New York which had ties to Semion Mogilevich and through which passed $4.2 billion from October 1998 to March 1999, refused to cooperate and resigned during an internal audit of the matter but was later indicted by the FBI for her role in which she received $500 a month from Edwards for her services. Alexander Mamut's Sobinbank, which since August 2010 is a subsidiary of Rossiya Bank, was raided on October 10, 1999, in support of United States investigations into money laundering at the Bank of New York. The Vanuatu registered Sobinbank Limited facilitated transfers between December 1997 and February 1999 for Benex accounts. Edmond Safra of the bank Republic New York, which is a longtime rival of the Bank of New York, alerted the FBI to the money laundering scheme which also involved Russian banks including Sobinbank and the Depozitarno-Kliringovy Bank (DKB) or the Russian Deposit Clearinghouse Bank (Russian: российский «Депозитарно-клиринговый банк» («ДКБ»)) which was created by Peter Berlin and had the same address as the Bees Lowland offshore shell company. $3 billion went from both Russian DKB and Sobinbank accounts through the Igor and Oleg Berezovsky owned Italian firm Prima based in Rimini and, through Andrei Marisov at the Grigory Luchansky associated French firm Kama Trade which had accounts with the Société bancaire arabe (SBA) to accounts at the Peter Berlin created Sinex Bank in Nauru.

In 2006, the Bank of New York traded its retail banking and regional middle-market businesses for J.P. Morgan Chase's corporate trust assets. The deal signaled the bank's exit from retail banking.

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