American Banker is a Manhattan-based trade publication covering the financial services industry. Originally a daily newspaper, the print edition ceased publication in 2016, with an online edition continuing to be updated. The first issue of American Banker was published in 1885, though it has been considered a continuation of the earlier Thompson's Bank Note Reporter, a bank note reporter which began publication in 1842. Although often confused with the American Bankers Association or other industry trade groups, American Banker is unaffiliated with any portion of the banking industry. History American Banker claims descent from Thompson's Bank Note Reporter, a periodical published by John Thompson. For this reason, American Bankers masthead gives a founding date of 1836, though the best available evidence suggests that Johnson's paper began publication in 1842. During the free banking era, Thompson's Bank Reporter was the most widely read and trusted of the several dozen bank note reporters in print—a genre of periodical which published information about the market value of the notes printed by each of the hundreds of banks spread across North America, as well as up to date descriptions of counterfeit bills in circulation. In the mid-1860s, the traditional function of a bank note reporter became obsolete as a uniform national paper currency came to be adopted across the country; for this reason, the character of Thompson's Bank Note Reporter shifted toward that of a "bank directory". Around the same time, John Thompson sold the paper. It continued to change hands a number of times over the following twenty years, and its reputation declined. In 1884–1885, the paper was the subject of a scandal when it was found to have been attempting to blackmail banks across the country with threats of disparaging their reputation; the paper's publisher, L. P. Haver, ultimately avoided prison time by agreeing to cease publishing the paper. In 1885, Charles David Steurer, who had been managing the printing of Thompson's Bank Note Reporter for some time, founded a publishing house, Stumpf & Steurer, with friend Anthony Stumpf. They launched American Bank Reporter, a bank directory similar to the latest incarnation of Thompson's, as well as American Banker, a weekly financial newspaper. American Banker became a daily newspaper in 1899. The Otis years, ca. 1910-1983 Members of the Otis family of Boston purchased the newspaper and its sister publication, Bond Buyer, around 1910, and for several decades it remained a family-owned