History

• 1901: Shortly after Cuba
  Cuba
  The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
  
   achieved its independence from Spain, José and Francisco Nonell y Feliu, who had been running a Cambio in Cuba since 1885, moved their business to Barcelona
  Barcelona
  Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
  
  . There they joined with local merchants to found a bank, Nonell, Rovira y Matas, to facilitate the investment in local securities of money that Catalans were repatriating from Cuba.
• 1917: The bank changed its name to Nonell Hermanos.
• 1920s: The bank's name became Banca Nonell.
• 1946: Claudio Güell y Churruca, Count of Ruiseñada, took over the bank and renamed it Banco Atlántico.
• 1961: Güell's descendants sold their shares to a new group of investors.
• At some point Continental Illinois Bank owned part of Banco Atlántico, but eventually Rumasa, a holding company owned by José María Ruiz Mateos
  José María Ruiz Mateos
  José María Ruiz-Mateos y Jiménez de Tejada is a Spanish businessman.He began by exporting wine to England. He founded the conglomerate Rumasa and had a lot of influence in Spanish society. In 1983, the government of Spain expropriated the company...
  
  , came to own the bank.
• 1975: Banco Atlántico established an agency in New York that it closed in 2001.
• 1983: The Spanish Socialist government of Felipe González
  Felipe González
  Felipe González Márquez is a Spanish socialist politician. He was the General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party from 1974 to 1997. To date, he remains the longest-serving Prime Minister of Spain, after having served four successive mandates from 1982 to 1996.-Early life:Felipe was...
  
   and Miguel Boyer nationalized Rumasa
  Rumasa
  Rumasa was a holding company founded by Spanish entrepreneur José María Ruiz Mateos and expropriated by the Spanish government on February 23, 1983.In 1982 Rumasa constituted 2% of the Spanish GDP...
  
  , including Atlántico. (Rumasa and Ruiz Mateos were also linked to Opus Dei
  Opus Dei
  Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei , is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the...
  
  , to which they had apparently funneled amounts in the millions of dollars.) Rumasa, which owned 20 banks and some 300 other companies, had failed and was too large for the Corporación Bancaria to deal with. By this time, Banco Atlántico was the 10th largest bank in Spain, with 172 branches at home. It also had the agency in New York and a branch in Grand Cayman, two subsidiaries in Switzerland and Panama, and representative offices in eight countries.
• 1984: Arab Banking Corporation (ABC; 70%), with BBVA and Allianz
  Allianz
  SE is a global financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core business and focus is insurance. As of 2010, it was the world's 12th-largest financial services group and 23rd-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.Its Allianz Global Investors...
  
  , acquired Atlántico from the government. Thereafter, Atlántico added private banking subsidiaries in the Bahamas, Gibraltar
  Gibraltar
  Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
  
  , and Monaco
  Monaco
  Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
  
  , while disposing of the one in Switzerland. Then Banco Exterior replaced BBVA and Allianz as shareholders.
• 1999 BBVA returned to partial ownership of Atlántico after it acquired Argentaria, which the Spanish government had created to combine several banks, including Banco Exterior.
• 2003: Banco Sabadell
  Banco Sabadell
  Banco Sabadell, S.A. is a major bank headquartered in Sabadell. Together with Banco de Asturias, Banco Urquijo, Sabadell Banca Privada, Banco Herrero, Solbank and ActivoBank, it is part of the Banco Sabadell Group, which is the fifth largest commercial banking group in Spain after Banco Santander,...
  
  , beating out bids from several banks including Barclays Bank and Caixa Geral de Depositos
  Caixa Geral de Depósitos
  Caixa Geral de Depósitos is a Portuguese state-owned banking corporation and the largest bank in Portugal.- History :*1876 — Caixa Geral de Depósitos was founded under the aegis of the Junta de Crédito Público....
  
  of Portugal, acquired and absorbed Banco Atlántico.