The Associates — the finance company South Bend founded

1918 – 2000

Founded here:The Associates Investment Company was incorporated under Indiana law on 29 May 1918. Its business was the new century's credit, in four classes: the purchase of retail installment obligations, wholesale dealer financing, direct and personal loans, and industrial and commercial loans. It became the fourth-largest automobile sales finance company in the United States, and its main executive offices stood in South Bend — the Harvard Business School's Baker Library chronology of the house, compiled for the Lehman Brothers Collection, states the South Bend seat outright in its 1979 summary. The chronology preserves the early scale: in 1928 the company's net profit was $630,293, its fourth-best year to that point.

The course out of South Bend: The company — by then the Associates Corporation of North America — passed out of local hands in stages the federal record documents. It was owned by Gulf+Western until 1989, when the Ford Motor Company purchased The Associates for $3.35 billion. Ford distributed its 80.7% stake in a spin-off in 1998, a stake valued at $22.7 billion with a $3.1 billion cash distribution. By the Ford era the company's base stood in Dallas and Irving, Texas, at 250 East Carpenter Freeway. On 30 November 2000 Citigroup completed its acquisition of Associates First Capital for about $31.1 billion in stock; the company Citi bought was then the largest publicly traded finance company in the United States, with managed assets over $100 billion and 2,750 offices in the United States and thirteen other countries. One fact the record reached does not fix: the year the executive offices left South Bend. It stands somewhere in the interval between the Baker Library's 1979 statement of the South Bend seat and the Ford-era Dallas filings, and it is printed as an interval, not a date.

Sources:

1. Harvard Business School, Baker Library, Lehman Brothers Collection — the company's chronology, as filed in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proceeding: the Indiana incorporation of 29 May 1918, the fourth-largest standing in automobile sales finance, the four classes of business, the 1928 net profit, and the main executive offices in South Bend in the 1979 summary.
2. Ford Motor Company, SEC release, 3 March 1998 — the Gulf+Western ownership to 1989, Ford's $3.35 billion purchase, and the 1998 spin-off of the 80.7% stake.
3. Associates First Capital, SEC Form 8-K filings, September–December 2000 — the Dallas/Irving base and Citigroup's completed acquisition of 30 November 2000 at about $31.1 billion, with the company's size at the sale.