Whatever happened to Valley National Bank of Arizona


If you lived in Phoenix any time between the 1890s and 1992, you probably remember Valley Bank. No, that's not a typo, 1890s, eighteen-nineties. And even if you didn't bank there, there were branches all over Arizona, and chances are very good that someone you knew financed their house, car, or business, through VNB.

I've spent many years trying to figure out the story of what went wrong, and what went right, with Valley National Bank of Arizona. And what went wrong was, well, the 1980s in Arizona.

If you know about the financial disasters that hit Arizona in the 1980s, a lot of things spring to mind. The Savings and Loan failures, Charlie Keating, the list goes on and on. And apparently the shock waves were enough to even affect a solid institution like Valley National Bank.

By the time I started at VNB, in their marketing department, in 1989, the company was in terrible trouble. I really didn't understand, and still don't today, but I knew that it was not paying dividends to its shareholders (it's called freezing). People who did understand were genuinely concerned for the future of Phoenix, and of Arizona. The fact was that VNB had pretty much financed most of Phoenix since the 1890s, and its collapse would have a devastating effect on the city. Sure, there was the FDIC, but that wasn't going to be enough to protect the crushing effect of a bankrupt Valley National Bank on the city that it had helped to create.

From my selfish point of view, I just remember thinking how unfortunate it would be for me, after getting this great job, to watch it wash away as the company failed. I really had no idea how important Valley Bank was, not just to me.

For the rest of the story, you have to appreciate that true national banking was on its way. That is, banking over state lines, which we take for granted today. Before national banking was legalized in 1996, no bank could operate over state lines. The idea went back to the Great Depression. If a bank should fail, at least its failure would be contained within a state. And that's why Bank One had been buying up banks all over the country, and it probably got Valley National Bank, in 1992, at a bargain price.

I was a Bank One employee from 1992 to 1996 and it was a glorious time. They brought in the much-needed capital to keep the bank running. And, really, other than the name, nothing else changed at that time. The bank kept the same employees, like me. Even the Valley Bank commercials, which had the head coaches from ASU and the U of A, remained the same. The logo changed from Valley National Bank to Bank One, but that's all. Bank One was wise enough to let the bank continue running. And it came back strong. So strong that in 2002 JP Morgan Chase bought it, and Chase continues the legacy of "financing the frontier".

And that's what happened to Valley Bank.

Comments

  1. Ron GeislerDecember 13, 2020 at 9:34 PM

    When I was a kid, I had a saving account with vnb, never closed it. wonder whatever happened to it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brad HallDecember 14, 2020 at 10:41 AM

      Hi Ron - my best guess is that you've long since donated it. I left a small amount of money in an account in California and forgot all about it for a couple of years, and it was gone when I got around to checking it. They said, "No activity". So they can name a freeway after me, or something!

      Delete
  2. UnknownOctober 22, 2021 at 6:36 AM

    I acquired a money bag from Valley National Bank at an auction. If u would like to have it, I can mail it to you.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more