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(Little did we know then what was to come later...)
The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was an American bank established in 1910, which was at its peak the seventh-largest commercial bank in the United States as measured by deposits, with approximately $40 billion in assets.
In 1984, Continental Illinois faced what was then the largest bank failure in U.S. history, when a run on the bank led to its seizure by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The bank nearly collapsed under the weight of bad debt associated with oil industry financing associated with the energy price boom of the late 1970s. Regulators in the 1980s determined the bank was \"too big to fail\", and instead arranged a rescue under new management. Continental Illinois was eventually bought out and its former assets are now part of Bank of America.
The later failure of Washington Mutual in 2008 during the 2008 financial crisis dwarfed the failure of Continental Illinois.[1][2][3]
