A Moment in Bank History:
Inside the Envelope with Your Chase Manhattan Dividend Check, August 1956
(The last sentence on the cover jumps to the next page, so it's "Quarterly earnings since the Chase-Manhattan merger on March 31, 1955 have been as follows:") The Manhattan Company, a New York bank and holding company established on September 1, 1799, merged with Chase National Bank to form the Chase Manhattan Bank.
In 1956, Chase Manhattan Bank had assets of $7.3 billion. Currently, JPMorganChase had assets of approximately $4.9 trillion at the end of 1Q 2026, or over 671 times more.
We couldn't find the related stock price or dividend yield, but we (OK, AI) dug up these notes from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:
► Specific aggregate dividend yields for The Chase Manhattan Bank in 1956 are not formally published in public financial databases; however, historical banking archives from the period show large New York City banks typically paid dividend yields ranging from 3.5% to 5.0% during the mid-1950s.
► In 1956, the bank (formed in 1955 from the merger of the Chase National Bank and Bank of the Manhattan Company) requested that the Federal Reserve allow it to pay higher interest rates on time deposits. At that time, bank stocks were heavily favored by income-seeking investors for their dependable, steady payouts.