Description
Valley National Bancorp, doing business as Valley Bank, is a regional bank holding company headquartered in Wayne, New Jersey, with approximately $43 billion in assets. Its principal subsidiary, Valley National Bank (also doing business as Valley Bank), currently operates over 230 branch locations in northern and central New Jersey, the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, as well as Long Island, Westchester County, New York, Florida and Alabama.
Valley Bank is one of the largest commercial banks headquartered in New Jersey.
History
Founded in 1927 as the Passaic Park Trust Company, the bank changed its name in the mid 1930s to the Bank of Passaic and Trust Company. In 1956 the Bank of Passaic and Trust Company acquired the Bank of Allwood located in Clifton, New Jersey, and changed its name to The Bank of Passaic and Clifton. The acquisition of the Bank of Wayne in 1976 created a need for a new identity to show the expanded geographic reach of the bank, and the name Valley National Bank was chosen, in reference to the lower Passaic River valley shared by Wayne, Clifton, and Passaic.
In 1983, Valley National Bancorp was formed as the holding company of Valley National Bank.
In 1989, Samuel F. Riskin retired as the chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Riskin had served as the longest-tenured president of Valley National Bank, having been appointed in 1953. Under his leadership, the bank's assets grew from $40 million to $3 billion. Riskin, who died in 1992, was replaced by Gerald H. Lipkin, who served as chairman of the board of Valley National Bancorp, and who served as president and CEO of Valley National Bank until 2018.
On January 1, 2018, Ira Robbins was appointed CEO and president, the third president of the bank since 1953.