WHERE THEY’RE FROM
J.P. Morgan Chase is the product of so many mergers—and mergers of mergers—that a complete history of its evolution would rival the Bible in “begats.” Today’s machine is built upon an amalgamation of nearly 1,000 previous companies.

The highlights: The Bank of the Manhattan Company was founded by Aaron Burr in 1799 and merged with Chase in 1955. John Pierpont Morgan established Drexel Morgan & Co. in 1871 and quickly made it the world’s most powerful investment bank. Chase Manhattan merged with J.P. Morgan in 2000, and Bank One joined J.P. Morgan Chase with a $58 billion deal in 2004.

WHAT THEY DO
J.P.M.C. sells financial products and services to everyone from college students to hedge fund managers, first-time homeowners to university endowment trustees. The third-largest bank in the United States, J.P.M.C. has assets of $1.4 trillion and operates in more than 50 countries.

Investment banking is the company’s cornerstone and its most profitable business, although J.P. Morgan did not offer it between 1933 and 1990 because of government-imposed restrictions separating commercial and investment banking activities. On the retail side, J.P.M.C. provides all manner of consumer and small-business banking, financing, and insurance services. It’s hardly a small operation, however: J.P.M.C. is the second-largest credit-card issuer in the nation, with some 94 million cards in circulation.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
Blending patrician J.P. Morgan Chase with plebeian Bank One was tough, but the merger seems to have paid off. In 2006, the company’s profits rose by an astounding 65 percent to a record $13.65 billion.

The man responsible for successfully integrating the firms is Jamie Dimon, Bank One’s former director, who took over as chief executive in 2006. Dimon aggressively cut costs (notoriously slashing funds for company gyms and fresh flowers); canceled a plan to outsource a tech overhaul, devoting $3 billion to complete the process internally; and reduced salaries company-wide.

The acquisition of Bank One vastly expanded the company’s presence in the South and Midwest, and the 2006 acquisition of the Bank of New York’s consumer, small-business, and middle-market banking units (in exchange for J.P.M.C.’s corporate-trust operations) added more than 338 retail branches in the New York City area.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG
The company had more than $1 billion in exposure when Enron imploded. J.P.M.C. recovered about $600 million but ultimately had to pay about $2.7 billion to settle fraud charges relating to questionable loans—including $350 million to Enron, which claimed that the bank had aided and abetted its collapse. In 2005, the company paid $2 billion to settle investor lawsuits related to the 2001 meltdown of WorldCom.

WHAT’S NEXT
Having recently received some much-coveted banking licenses in Chinese cities, J.P.M.C. has already performed significant mergers and acquisitions, investment-banking services, and capital-markets transactions in China. It is also planning to develop risk-management products for the country’s currency markets.

Domestic expansion is also a major focus for J.P.M.C.: The Bank One merger upped its number of retail locations to about 2,600, in 17 states, but J.P.M.C. still lags well behind Bank of America and has little presence in the West.

Expect more cost cutting from Dimon; the savings will be invested in technology, systems consolidation, and streamlining. And, of course, in more mergers and acquisitions. —Julia Ramey