Britannica Money (2024)

Bank of Boston Corporation, former American bank holding company that was acquired by Fleet Financial Group in 1999. The bank, one of the oldest in the United States, was originally chartered in 1784 as the Massachusetts Bank. In 1903 it merged with the First National Bank of Boston (established in 1859 as the Safety Fund Bank) and assumed the latter’s name, which it kept until 1970. Bank of Boston conducted business with individual and commercial customers in the areas of finance, banking, and trust services. It was headquartered in Boston, Mass.

Subsidiaries of the corporation provided numerous services, including lending, cash-management programs, payroll processing, equipment leasing, and data processing. They also offered money-market operations, trust and agency services, factoring, mortgage banking, venture-capital financing, and commercial finance.

The Bank of Boston Corporation was formed in 1970 as the First National Boston Corporation. A reorganization followed that merged First National Bank of Boston and Old Colony Trust Company into the newly formed Massachusetts Bank NA, which then assumed the name First National Bank of Boston. It was renamed the Bank of Boston, N.A., in 1982 and became BankBoston Corporation in 1997. After the company was acquired in 1999 by another leading New England banking firm, Fleet Financial Group, the newly formed company, FleetBoston Financial, was acquired by Bank of America in 2004.