The bank continued to operate as Norstar in New York until 1992, when the company readopted the Fleet Financial Group name.
[3] Although Fleet was the surviving company, the merged bank was based at Shawmut's old headquarters at One Federal Street in Boston.
As a condition for merger, regulators required Fleet to divest 306 New England branches, including 28 to community banks.
The same year, Fleet sold 278 of its New England branches to Sovereign Bank as a part of the divestiture plan required by regulators to allow the 1999 acquisition of BankBoston.
[7][8] After Bank of America acquired Fleet in 2004, its overall Customer Satisfaction Index (as measured by the University of Michigan), was lowered from 74 to 72.
In 2002, FleetBoston Financial, along with Aetna and CSX Transportation, was sued by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, head of the nonprofit Restitution Study Group of Hoboken, New Jersey.
The suit asked for "unspecified damages, restitution for unpaid slave labor and a share of corporate profits derived from slavery" from the three companies.
The lawsuit claimed FleetBoston Financial, Aetna, and CSX were "unjustly enriched" by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings".
Prior to the abolition of slavery, predecessor banks which formed FleetBoston Financial were involved in the American slave trade.