EVENT: Fleet Financial Group merges with BankBoston in a $15 billion deal, making it the eighth-largest bank in the United States, with $180 billion in assets.
RECAP: Four banks, including Mechanics Bank and Worcester County Institution for Savings, were swallowed up by BankBoston from 1993 to 1995. A year later, BankBoston absorbed BayBanks, and in 1999, Fleet absorbed all of them. But amid concerns that one bank would dominate the region, some 275 Fleet offices and BankBoston branches in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut were placed in the hands of other banks.
FAST FORWARD: The Fleet name has long been gone from area banks after Bank of America bought it in 2004. Today, Bank of America holds close to $4 billion in deposits in its Central Massachusetts branches, a small percentage of the more than $1 trillion in all deposits it held as of June 2013. n
