How it started
Founding and early history
On February 11, 1908, Henry Ittleson founded the Commercial Credit and Investment Company in St. Louis, Missouri to finance accounts receivable at small companies.
In 1915, the company moved its headquarters to New York City and renamed itself Commercial Investment Trust (CIT). By that time, the company provided financing for wholesale suppliers and producers of consumer goods. The company added automobile financing to its product line in 1916 through an agreement with Studebaker, the first of its kind in the auto industry. During World War I, CIT financed the manufacture of 150 submarine chasers. It also added consumer financing of radios through an agreement with Thomas Edison, Inc. During the Roaring Twenties following the war, consumer spending rose dramatically and CIT prospered in its consumer appliance, furniture, and automobile financing groups. In 1924, CIT incorporated in Delaware and became a public company via an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. CIT began offering factoring in 1928 and expanded operations into Europe in 1929.
With international tensions rising prior to World War II, CIT closed its German operations in 1934. Arthur O. Dietz succeeded Ittleson as president of the company in 1939. During the war, CIT offered its 2,000 employees a month's bonus, life insurance, and a guaranteed job on return if they served in the United States Armed Forces. Between 1947 and 1950, the company's net income rose from $7.3 million to $30.8 million. Ittleson died at age 77 on October 27, 1948.
1950s - 1990s
In 1957, the company moved into a new building at 650 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. In 1958, to diversify, the company acquired Picker X-Ray Corporation, maker of X-ray and radiation equipment, for $1.9 million. In 1960, Walter Lundell succeeded Dietz as president of the company. In 1964, it acquired Gibson Greeting Cards for $36 million. In 1965, it acquired Meadow Brook Bank for $106.7 million in stock. In 1969, CIT entered the personal and home equity loan and leasing business and left auto financing. In 1979, restrictive banking rules forced CIT to sell its bank, National Bank of North America. CIT was acquired by RCA Corporation in 1980. RCA promptly sold CIT's four manufacturing businesses: Picker X-Ray, Inc., Gibson Greeting Cards, Inc., All-Steel, Inc. (office furniture), and Raco, Inc. (wall boxes for electric switches and outlets.) The Madison Avenue building was sold in 1982 as the company moved to a newly constructed headquarters facility in Livingston, New Jersey in 1983.
From Wikipedia’s article on CIT Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3