This company was founded in 1903 as a trust company for commercial banks which were precluded from engaging in trust business at the time. Therefore, in fact as well as in name, it was a trust company for banks. The banks were not allowed to perform any fiduciary services, and it is for this principal reason that J. P. Morgan and other colleagues were instrumental in the forming of Bankers Trust Company. With the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1914, which granted trust privileges to national banks for the first time, Bankers Trust decided, for competitive reasons, that it should enter commercial banking on a full scale. It acquired the Astor Trust Co. in 1917, and in 1922 was one of the first American banks to open an office in London. Its trust activities flourished during the 1930s as the bank was called upon to act as trustee in the safekeeping of collateral and in reorganizations. World War II brought many changes in the way Americans lived and did business. The bond campaigns made investors of many people who never before had owned securities of any kind. Checks were being used by many people whose only banking contact in past years had been a savings account. Beginning in 1951, the bank entered the retail market and expanded its operations in the state as well as worldwide. It saw the need of additional capital and offered $100 million of 25-year, 4½% capital notes in 1963, the first issue of its kind by a major bank. With the annual volume of customer checks reaching 120 million by 1962 and growing at the rate of 65,000 a day, the bank pioneered in check processing systems and was the first in New York to provide checks with magnetic ink code numbers. New facilities were built at 280 Park Avenue in 1962 and at One Bankers Trust Plaza, 130 Liberty Street in 1974. Expansion continued overseas with the opening of offices in 35 countries. Its non-banking activities have reached the point where Bankers Trust is a major participant in private placements, mergers and acquisitions, currency transactions, and securities underwriting. Bankers Trust sold nearly all of its retail branches in 1979 and 1980, concentrating more on wholesale banking and trust activities. Recent years have seen Bankers Trust establish itself as a truly global organization, with half of its revenue derived from activities overseas. By the mid-al90s, it ranked among the world's leading high yield securities underwriters and began a series of strategic acquisitions to strengthen its global merger & acquisition, and equities capabilities. In 1996 it acquired the mergers and acquisitions firm, Wolfensohn & Co. and the next year it acquired the nation's oldest investment bank, Alex, Brown & Sons. In 1999 Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank joined to form the largest bank in the world, with combined assets of over $850 billion and assets under management of over $670 billion.