Bank of the West

Bank of the West branch on West Dodge Road.

Bank of the West is a bank with over $55 billion in assets and a network of more than 700 retail and commercial locations throughout the western U.S. Bank of the West acquired the Omaha-based Commercial Federal Corporation in December 2005 and changed the many of the former Commercial Federal locations to be Bank of the West locations. Bank of the West is a subsidiary of holding company BancWest Corporation and is the third-largest commercial bank based in the Western U.S. BancWest is urrently a wholly-owned subsidiary of French bank BNP Paribas (BNPP).

[edit] History

1874: The Bank of the West began as Farmers National Gold Bank of San Jose, California.
1880: When all bank notes became convertible to gold or silver, the bank converted from a Gold National Bank and changed its name to the First National Bank of San Jose, California.
1970: Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) established French Bank of California.
1970s: First National Bank of San Jose changed its name to Bank of the West.
1979: BNP bought Bank of the West and merged in French Bank of California.
1987: BW bought Bank of Los Gatos.
1990: BW bought Central Banking Systems.
1991: BW bought 30 branches in Northern California from failed Imperial Savings and Loan.
1992: BW bought Atlantic Financial Federal Savings Bank from the Resolution Trust Corporation.
1993: BW bought 15 branches in Northern California from Citibank.
1995: BW bought NorthBay Savings Bank headquartered in Petaluma, CA.
1995: First Hawaiian established Pacific One Bank to hold 30 branches in Washington, Oregon and Idaho that it acquired from West One Bank.
1997: BW bought branches from Bank of America and Coast Federal Bank.
1998: BNP and First Hawaiian Inc., the parent of First Hawaiian Bank and Pacific One Bank, created a company under the BancWest Bancorp name to hold BW and First Hawaiian Bank.
1999: BW bought Sierra West Bancorp. This transaction temporarily diluted BNPP’s ownership of the holding company to 42%.
2001: First Security Bancorp and Wells Fargo Bank merged. To avoid antitrust issues, they sold First Securities’ branches in New Mexico and Wells Fargo’s branches in Nevada to BW.
May 2001: The independent directors of BancWest Bancorp established a Special Committee that then unanimously voted to accept BNPP’s offer to acquire the remaining 55% of BancWest Bancorp, making the holding company a wholly owned subsidiary of BNP.
Dec. 2001: BW bought United California Bank from UFJ Bank, of Japan.
Mar. 2004: BW announced the purchase of Community First Bankshares, a bank holding company that operated Community First National Bank, headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota.
Dec. 2005: BW bought Commercial Federal Corporation of Omaha, Nebraska. This merger added offices in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma to Bank of the West.
Feb. 2006: BW opened a representative office in Tokyo, Japan.

[edit] External links

This article uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Bank_of_the_West. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with this wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the CC by-sa 3.0 License.

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