MUFG Union Bank Logo

MUFG Union Bank traces its oldest line to 4 July 1864, when William Chapman Ralston and Darius Ogden Mills opened the Bank of California in San Francisco. It became the first commercial bank in the western United States, grew around financing the Comstock Lode silver mines, and survived Ralston’s 1875 collapse after his Palace Hotel venture failed.

A second line began in 1914, when Kaspare Cohn founded Kaspare Cohn Commercial & Savings Bank in Los Angeles. It became Union Bank & Trust Company of Los Angeles in 1918, moved its main office to San Francisco in 1922, and shortened its name to Union Bank in 1958. In the 1960s and 1970s, Union Bank opened offices in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and London.

Foreign ownership reshaped the bank from 1979, when Standard Chartered bought Union Bank for $377 million. In 1988, Bank of Tokyo acquired it for $750 million and merged it with California First Bank. Mitsubishi Bank owned the Bank of California. In 1996, after Mitsubishi Bank and Bank of Tokyo formed Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Union Bank and Bank of California were combined into UnionBanCal Corporation, with Union Bank of California, N.A. as the main bank.

UnionBanCal bought Phileo Allied Bank in 2001. In 2008, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group bought the remaining 35% of UnionBanCal and took it private. In 2014, MUFG integrated Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ’s US operations with Union Bank. In 2015, the bank became MUFG Union Bank. In September 2021, MUFG agreed to sell its retail and regional banking business to US Bancorp for about $8 billion. The deal closed on 1 December 2022.