M&T was founded in 1856 in Western New York state as "Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company". The company opened its first branch on August 29 of that year at 2 East Swan Street in Buffalo. In 1983, Robert G. Wilmers was named Chairman and CEO, a position he held until his death in December 2017. Between 1987 and 2009, M&T Bank acquired 20 financial institutions, as follows:
September 1999: 29 Chase Bank Branches in Buffalo, Jamestown, and Binghamton
October 2000: Keystone Financial of Central Pennsylvania
February 2001: Premier Nation Bancorp of Newburgh
April 2003: Allfirst Bank of Baltimore, a subsidiary of Allied Irish Banks of Ireland, in exchange for 26.7 million shares of M&T and $886 million in cash. At the direction of Irish government financial regulators, AIB sold its 22% ownership interest in M&T in 2010.
July 2006: 21 Citibank branches in Buffalo and Rochester
December 2007: Partners Trust Financial Group, including 33 branches in upstate New York, for $555 million.
August 2009: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized Bradford Bank and sold all its deposits and most assets to M&T. M&T and the FDIC agreed to share future losses on $338 million worth of Bradford's assets.
In May 2011, M&T acquired Wilmington Trust for $351 million in stock. On August 27, 2012, M&T announced the acquisition of Hudson City Bancorp for $3.7 billion. The bank had $25 billion in deposits and $28 billion in loans and 135 brick-and-mortar branch locations including 97 in New Jersey. The acquisition was delayed for 3 years due to a money laundering case involving an M&T branch and the acquisition closed on November 2, 2015. In 2008, M&T received a $600 million investment by the United States Treasury as a result of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and M&T assumed another $482 million in TARP obligations from its acquisitions. In 2011, the bank repaid $700 million of TARP funds. On December 16, 2017, Robert Wilmers died and non-Executive Chairman Robert T. Brady became acting Chairman and CEO. On December 20, 2017, René F. Jones was appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Legal issues
Money laundering
In June 2014, a U.S. District Judge ordered M&T Bank to forfeit $560,000 in drug proceeds that had been laundered through its Perry Hall, Maryland, branch. At least 8 times from 2011 to 2013, Deanna Bailey, a drug dealer, went to the branch and had head teller Sabrina Fitts convert cash amounts from $20,000 to $100,000 into larger bills. Fitts accepted a 1% transaction fee in exchange for not filing a currency transaction report. This violated the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 which requires all cash transactions of more than $10,000 to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. The acquisition of Hudson City Bancorp was delayed for more than 3 years by the Federal Reserve Board, which was unconvinced that the bank's anti-laundering controls were strong enough.
