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Business

The Companies That Have Survived Most of America's 250-Year Story and What They Can Teach Investors

While most of us are celebrating the Fourth with fireworks and a long weekend, a handful of companies are quietly marking something rarer: surviving nearly the entire lifespan of the country itself.

Market MunchiesΒ·Jul 4, 2026Β·10 min read
The Companies That Have Survived Most of America's 250-Year Story

Most companies do not last. The average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has fallen from more than 60 years in the 1950s to fewer than 20 years today. Every year, businesses that seemed permanent β€” household names, market leaders, seemingly unassailable franchises β€” disappear through bankruptcy, acquisition, or simply irrelevance. The corporate graveyard is enormous, and most of the companies that filled it were once considered safe bets.

America turns 250 today. And while most of us are marking it with fireworks and a long weekend, a handful of publicly traded companies are quietly celebrating something rarer: they have been operating for most of the country's entire lifespan. They have outlasted wars, depressions, panics, technological revolutions, and multiple complete transformations of the global economy. America has had 46 presidents, one civil war, several financial panics, a railroad boom, an oil boom, a dot-com boom, a housing bust, a global pandemic, and more than a few "once-in-a-generation" crises. Colgate kept selling toothpaste. JPMorgan kept lending money. Procter and Gamble kept making detergent.

The point of examining them is not to suggest you should only invest in very old companies. The point is to understand what qualities make a business genuinely durable β€” and why those qualities, which are easy to overlook when markets are celebrating the newest thing, tend to compound in ways that shorter-term thinking misses entirely. When everyone around you is chasing AI chip stocks or prediction market schemes, asking what a business will look like in 2050 is a more useful exercise than it might seem.

The oldest stock in America was founded by Alexander Hamilton

If you want to find the oldest publicly traded company in the United States, you start in 1784, in Lower Manhattan, two years before the signing of the Constitution. That year, a group of merchants and lawyers led by Alexander Hamilton β€” later the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury β€” founded the Bank of New York. Hamilton wrote its constitution and served as one of its first directors.

When the New York Stock Exchange opened in 1792 β€” formed under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street β€” the Bank of New York was the first company listed. It has been trading ever since.

Today, that institution exists as BNY, which changed its NYSE ticker from BK to BNY in May 2026, formed through the 2007 merger of the Bank of New York with Mellon Financial Corporation. It is now the world's largest custodian bank, overseeing approximately $59.4 trillion in assets for institutions, corporations, and governments around the world. The bank that Hamilton built to help New York's shipping industry now safeguards a significant portion of the planet's investable assets.

The transformation from a small commercial bank serving Manhattan merchants to the global custodian of a significant portion of the world's investable assets is not a story of standing still. BNY survived by doing something consistently difficult: reinventing what it does while keeping hold of the trust that made it indispensable. When commercial banking became competitive and margins compressed, it moved into custody and asset servicing. When those became digital, it invested in technology platforms. At every stage, the core value proposition β€” you can trust us with your money β€” remained intact even as the business around it changed completely.

JPMorgan Chase: from Aaron Burr's political gambit to the world's largest bank

The roots of JPMorgan Chase trace back to 1799, when Aaron Burr β€” yes, the man who would later kill Hamilton in a duel β€” persuaded the New York state legislature to charter a water supply company called the Manhattan Company. Buried in the company's charter was a clause allowing it to use surplus capital for "any monied transactions or operations." Burr used that loophole to immediately establish a bank to compete with Hamilton's Bank of New York.

That bank eventually became the Bank of the Manhattan Company, then Chase Manhattan Bank, then JPMorgan Chase. Today, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, managing more than $4.4 trillion in assets and serving customers across more than 60 countries. Its CEO Jamie Dimon, in his annual letter to shareholders this year written in honor of America's 250th anniversary, reflected on 227 years of the institution's history and its role in financing American growth from the railroad era through the AI age.

The JPMorgan Chase story is one of relentless adaptation. The bank that Burr founded as a political maneuver to challenge Hamilton has, through more than a hundred mergers and acquisitions over two centuries, become the preeminent financial institution in the world's largest economy. It survived the Panic of 1907, the Great Depression, the 2008 financial crisis, and a decade of zero interest rates. Each time, it emerged larger than before β€” not because it got lucky, but because scale, diversification, and management depth compounded over time in the same way that a good investment does.

Citigroup: founded in 1812, still serving 200 million customers

Founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York with $2 million in capital, the institution that became Citigroup has served as a financial backbone of American commercial life for more than two centuries. It became The National City Bank of New York in 1865 when it joined the national banking system, then built out into one of the first genuinely global banks in the early twentieth century.

Citigroup's history is not an unblemished record of success. It nearly failed in the 2008 financial crisis, required a massive government bailout, and spent years rebuilding its capital base and simplifying its operations afterward. The fact that it survived β€” and is still operating, still publicly traded, still serving more than 200 million customer accounts in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions β€” is a testament to something important: scale and institutional relevance can provide a kind of resilience that pure financial performance alone cannot. Citigroup has been genuinely mismanaged at various points in its history. It is still here. That is itself a lesson about what certain kinds of businesses can absorb and survive.

Consolidated Edison: keeping the lights on since before the lightbulb

Consolidated Edison traces its origins to 1823, when it began as the New York Gas Light Company, providing gas for street lamps in lower Manhattan. It eventually expanded into electricity, steam, and energy infrastructure serving New York City. Today it remains one of the longest-listed stocks on the New York Stock Exchange and one of the largest regulated utilities in the country.

Utilities have historically ranked among the most enduring public companies for a simple reason: the demand for energy is not discretionary. Con Edison provides power to New York City and Westchester County β€” roughly 3.5 million customers in one of the densest, most economically productive regions in the world. That customer base does not disappear in a recession. Regulated utilities are also protected from competitive disruption in ways that most businesses are not: their right to operate in a given territory is established by regulators, creating a durable revenue stream that does not require winning customers away from rivals. The trade-off is limited upside. The benefit is extraordinary stability.

Colgate-Palmolive: toothpaste since 1806

Colgate-Palmolive was founded in 1806 by William Colgate as a soap, candle, and starch business on Dutch Street in New York City. Candles. Colgate died in 1857, before the Civil War even began. The company he left behind is now the global leader in oral care, serving consumers in more than 200 countries and territories.

What kept Colgate alive for 220 years is fundamentally simpler than the financial engineering that kept the banks afloat: people have always needed to clean their teeth. The company operates in what investors call a consumer staples business β€” products that people buy regardless of whether the economy is booming or contracting, regardless of what interest rates are doing or what the latest technology is. Toothpaste is not exciting. Neither is dish soap or pet food. But the companies that make them reliably generate cash through every economic environment humans have managed to create.

Colgate has raised its dividend for more than 60 consecutive years, which means it has paid a growing dividend through the Vietnam War, the stagflation of the 1970s, the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, a global pandemic, and an energy war in the Middle East. That consistency is not an accident. It is the product of a business model that does not require any particular economic condition to generate income.

Procter and Gamble: the father-in-law merger that became a Dividend King

Procter and Gamble was founded in 1837 when William Procter, a candlemaker, and James Gamble, a soapmaker, were persuaded by their shared father-in-law to stop competing with each other and become partners instead. The company they built in Cincinnati has become one of the most studied examples of long-term corporate survival in business school curricula around the world.

P&G has paid a dividend continuously since 1890 and raised that dividend for 70 consecutive years, making it a Dividend King β€” one of a very small group of companies that have raised their dividend annually for at least 50 consecutive years. To put that in context, P&G's dividend has grown every single year through the Korean War, the assassination of a president, Vietnam, Watergate, double-digit inflation, the savings and loan crisis, the Gulf War, the dot-com collapse, September 11, the 2008 financial crisis, a global pandemic, and the first major European land war in decades.

The secret is not complicated. P&G makes things people use every day: Tide detergent, Pampers diapers, Gillette razors, Oral-B toothbrushes, Charmin toilet paper, Crest toothpaste, Head and Shoulders shampoo. None of those products are glamorous. None of them will be disrupted by artificial intelligence or replaced by a startup that a 22-year-old built in a garage. The demand for them is essentially permanent, which means the cash flow they generate is essentially permanent, which means the dividend can keep growing.

What the surviving companies have in common

Looking at the companies that have navigated most of America's 250-year history, a clear pattern emerges. They are not the most exciting businesses in any given era. They tend to share four qualities that are easy to overlook when the market is celebrating the newest thing.

Essential demand is the first. The products or services they provide are needed regardless of the economic cycle. Banking, financial custody, energy, oral hygiene, consumer staples β€” people do not stop opening bank accounts, using electricity, or brushing their teeth when the economy slows down. Boring demand turns out to be remarkably durable demand.

Adaptability is the second. Every single company on this list has fundamentally changed what it does multiple times. BNY went from commercial banking to global custody. JPMorgan went from a political banking gambit to the world's largest financial institution through more than a hundred mergers. Colgate went from soap and candles to global oral care. Con Edison went from gas lamps to electricity to modern energy infrastructure. The companies that survived are not the ones that clung to their original business model β€” they are the ones that preserved their core competency and customer trust while reinventing everything else around it.

Financial conservatism is the third. Every long-surviving company on this list has, at various points in its history, maintained the financial discipline to survive periods when others did not. Strong balance sheets, manageable debt, and the ability to generate cash even when conditions are difficult are not exciting qualities. They are survival qualities.

Accumulated trust is the fourth. Colgate, Procter and Gamble, JPMorgan, Citigroup β€” these names carry a level of consumer and institutional trust that took generations to build and cannot be replicated by a competitor quickly. That accumulated trust is an economic moat in the most literal sense: a barrier to competition that is almost impossible to overcome in a short time frame.

The investor lesson for right now

In a week when markets are rotating out of AI chip stocks, when prediction markets are being gamed by fake Spotify streams, when Tesla's best quarter ever sent its stock lower, and when the Fed is trying to read a labor market that is sending conflicting signals in every direction β€” the companies that have survived most of American history offer a useful counterpoint.

The businesses being celebrated most loudly in any given era are almost never the ones that compound the most reliably over the long term. In the 1960s it was conglomerates. In the 1990s it was dot-coms. In the 2020s it has been cryptocurrency and then AI. Each era has its version of the next big thing, and each era also has its version of the quiet businesses that simply kept serving their customers while the excitement cycled through.

The question worth asking about any business is not whether it is exciting today, but whether it will still be solving the same fundamental problem for its customers in 2040 or 2050. The companies that have survived most of America's 250-year story did not get there by being the most thrilling investment in any given decade. They got there by being genuinely indispensable, decade after decade, long after the companies that once seemed more exciting had disappeared.

Long-term investing is not about finding the next great idea. It is about understanding which businesses will still be solving the same fundamental problems for their customers in 10, 20, or 50 years β€” and having the patience to hold them while the rest of the market chases whatever is exciting right now.

The great irony of long-term investing is that the most enduring companies often look boring while they are doing the enduring. Happy 250th.

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