R.I.P. The Trust Company

After existing based in Jersey City as a part of history since the 1800s, the Trust Company bank has vanished without a trace. For decades and decades it was an upstanding business and a Jersey City landmark-- physically even. The large Trust Company Building in Journal square, with the huge metalli-concrete red heart logotype on top of it attests to this. They were a nice bank too, besides that.

The Trust Company was a great New Jersey bank with 91 locations statewide and $4 billion in cash, based out of here in Jersey City for centuries. But, as is typical of the dangerous (for the economy and for consumers) rampant consolidation and total centralisation that has been taking place in the banking industry the past few years, it has been bought up by one of those conglomerates from New York state-- North Fork Bancorporation, Inc. They've acquired it, since it provides a strong platform for their launch into this lucrative new market (New Jerseyians). Now many Trust Company branches are being closed.

However, that is not all. As is typical of NFB, they are restructuring the bank under the North Fork name. So, as of the 15th of may, a week or so ago, the Trust Company disappeared in name, just as it had disappeared in law a few weeks prior. All the insignia and logotype of the Trust Company will disappear. The Trust Company Building, a historic building in Journal Square, will have its heart sign removed and it'll probably be sold off or something. The entire intellectual property inasmuch as trademarks will be eliminated. There is no Trust Company any more.

Now, what we'd like to point out again here is that this trend, in general, forgetting about this local experience, of many banks, large and small, acquiring each other, is somewhat unsettling. Lessened competition and centrally controlled banking seems like the future and I don't expect the future to be better than the past.

Get ready for a financial environment with just a few big national and multinationals in this country, much like our media environment.

In the meantime, mourn the passing of one of the most historic institutions in New Jersey. Banks are central to finance and the economy and they've been around as an industry for a long time. So these mergers probably cause a lot of things like this. But it really is a shame.

I have a plan, a ready-to-fail plan though.

I want to buy the The Trust Company brand from NFB. They won't be using it anyway; it'll be destroyed as all the branches are rebranded as North Fork and the The Trust Company name and logotype and service marks are eliminated sysematically. So I move to attempt to buy up the legal rights to those marks and the intellectual property of The Trust Company from NFB.

Itself The Trust Company may be gone but if only its name didn't need to do so too.

Posted by galdosd at May 20, 2004 01:52 PM