American Banker

American Banker is a daily trade newspaper and website covering the financial services industry. Founded in 1836 and based in New York, American Banker has approximately 50 reporters and editors in six U.S. cities who monitor developments and breaking news affecting banks. The newspaper has won praise for its coverage of important policy issues, including passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, congressional debates surrounding regulation of government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the near-constant wave of mergers and acquisitions that affect banks.

Traditionally published as a five-day-a-week print daily, the newspaper now appears in print Monday through Thursday, with the Friday edition available in a PDF. AmericanBanker.com receives more than 1 million page views per month, and is updated continuously. Marc Hochstein, previously Executive Editor of American Banker, was named Editor in Chief in August 2014, succeeding Neil Weinberg. Other former editors of American Banker include Barbara A. Rehm, who was editor in chief from 2008 to 2010, and David Longobardi, who was editor in chief from 1999 to 2009, when he was named Chief Content Officer of SourceMedia Inc., the business media company that had owned American Banker since 2004. Edwin A. Finn topped the masthead in 1990–92. and Phil Roosevelt from 1995 to 1999. As of May 2012, Finn was editor and president and Roosevelt was deputy managing editor of Barron's.

Although often confused with the American Bankers Association or other industry trade groups, American Banker is an independent newspaper and is unaffiliated with any portion of the banking industry. The newspaper was founded as "Thompson's Bank Note Reporter" in 1836 by American financier John Thompson and was renamed American Banker in 1866. It became a daily newspaper in 1899. Members of the Otis family of Boston purchased the newspaper and its sister publication, Bond Buyer, around 1910, and for several decades it remained a family-owned enterprise. Otis descendant Derick Otis Steinmann was Chairman and CEO of American Banker and Bond Buyer from 1975 to the mid-1980s. Steinmann transitioned the newspapers to the computer era, and facilitated their sale in 1983 to International Thomson, from the estate of Charles Otis. American Banker has been owned since 2004 by SourceMedia.

The newspaper also sponsors several banking industry conferences and the Most Powerful Women in Banking awards dinner in New York. It awards the Banker of the Year and other Best in Banking honors annually in a special edition. The annual Banker of the Year awards dinner that had been an American Banker tradition on and off since the early 1990s was halted in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008–9.