LaSalle Bank says parent firm's predecessors had slavery link

CHICAGO -- LaSalle Bank Corp. said Friday that exhaustive research had uncovered ties to the slave era by some predecessors to its Dutch corporate parent, ABN Amro Bank NV.

While it said its own predecessors were not found to have any connections to slavery, LaSalle deplored the era of slavery and released full results of the study it commissioned.

The company commissioned the independent study by History Associates Incorporated in connection with a Chicago ordinance requiring firms that do business with the city to disclose all historic profits from or investments in African slavery.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wachovia Corp. last year became the first companies to acknowledge that their predecessor banks had specific links to the slave trade.

LaSalle said ABN Amro predecessors in the Netherlands and France traded in securities and goods with slaveholding areas of the United States, and U.S. ABN Amro predecessors in the Netherlands, France and Germany had historical connections to African slavery elsewhere in the Americas.

Predecessors in all three countries had business associates in slaveholding territories, invested in securities associated with slaveholding territories and traded in goods produced by slaveholding territories, it said. Predecessors in France and the Netherlands had connections to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and one predecessor in the Netherlands accepted slaves as collateral on loans.

"The era of slavery is a deplorable period in the world's history," said LaSalle Bank CEO Norman Bobins. "While predecessors of LaSalle Bank Corp. do not have any historical ties to slavery, it is prudent that we share the full results of the study that we commissioned."