Fleet Boston - Definition

FleetBoston Financial was a Boston, Massachusetts-based bank created in 1999 by the merger of Fleet Financial Group and BankBoston. In 2004 it merged with Bank of America; all its bank branches were given the Bank of America logo.

In its time it was the seventh-largest bank in the United States, as measured by assets ($197 billion in 2003). It had almost 50,000 employees, over 20 million customers worldwide and revenues of $12 billion per year.

During the construction of a sports arena in Boston, FleetBoston acquired the naming rights to the facility, which therefore opened as the FleetCenter in 1995. It is home to the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association and the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League.