Northern Trust Corporation

Northern Trust Corporation

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: NTRS S&P 500 Component
Industry	Financial services
Founded	1889
Founder	Byron Laflin Smith
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Key people	Frederick H. Waddell (CEO) Michael G. O'Grady (President)
Products	Private banking Investment management Wealth management
Revenue	US$ 5.144 Billion (2016)
Net income	US$ 1,032.5 Million (2016)
AUM	US$ 946 billion (September 2016)
Total assets	US$ 123.9 billion (2016)
Total equity	US$ 9.770 billion (2016)
Number of employees	17,100 (2016)
Website	www.northerntrust.com

Frederick H. Waddell (CEO)

The Northern Trust Corporation is an American international financial services company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It provides investment management, asset and fund administration, fiduciary and banking services through a network of 85 offices in 18 U.S. states and 20 international offices in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. As of June 30, 2014, Northern Trust Corporation had $106 billion in banking assets, $6.0 trillion in assets under custody and $924.4 billion in assets under management. They are regulated by the Federal Reserve. In March 2010, Forbes magazine ranked Northern Trust as the world's most admired company in the "Superregional Banks" category.

Northern Trust was founded in 1889 by Byron Laflin Smith in a one-room office in the Rookery Building in Chicago's Loop, with a focus on providing trust and banking services for the city's prosperous citizens. Smith provided 40% of the bank's original capitalization of $1 million, and counted such businessmen and civic leaders as Marshall Field, Martin A. Ryerson, and Philip D. Armour among the original 27 shareholders. Intimately acquainted with the operations of the bank, these men would personally examine Northern's assets and records at each year's end.

In October 1929, however, the flamboyant decade of the 1920s came to a sudden halt—the stock market crash led to a spectacular drop in prices, employment and production. As these troubles swept across the country, one bank after another closed. Two days after his inauguration on March 6, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt closed all the banks in the United States. When they reopened a short time later, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to what might occur. Fortunately, the people in line outside the Northern bank offices were there to deposit money instead of withdraw it. Northern's conservative policies had served it well during the 1920s.

By 1941 nearly half of all the bank's commercial accounts were drawn from outside the Chicago metropolitan area. During World War II, Northern once again took part in the government's war bond drives, and also provided loans for manufacturing war materials under special government programs. The war created more opportunities for the bank; all sectors of its business expanded, and by 1945 the Northern Trust had doubled in size.