Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. (BNCL)

Beneficial Bancorp was the holding company for Beneficial Bank, one of the oldest and largest banks headquartered in Philadelphia. The bank traced its origins to the Beneficial Saving Fund Society, incorporated in 1853 to give the city's immigrant families a safe place to save, and it opened for business in 1854. For most of its history it operated as a mutual savings institution owned by its depositors.

The bank first sold a minority stake to the public in 2007 through a mid-tier holding company, with shares trading on Nasdaq under BNCL. In early 2015 it completed a second-step conversion that made it a fully public stock company under the name Beneficial Bancorp. Over the years it added FMS Financial (parent of Farmers & Mechanics Bank), St. Edmond's Federal Savings Bank and Conestoga Bank, and moved its headquarters to 1818 Market Street.

By 2018 Beneficial had roughly $5 billion in assets and dozens of branches in southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. In August 2018 WSFS Financial Corporation of Wilmington, Delaware, agreed to acquire it in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at around $1.5 billion, creating the largest locally headquartered bank in the Greater Philadelphia and Delaware region.

The merger closed on March 1, 2019, and Beneficial shares stopped trading on Nasdaq. Shareholders received WSFS stock plus cash for each share. Beneficial branches were combined with WSFS locations and rebranded under the WSFS name in August 2019, retiring a banking brand that had served Philadelphia for more than 160 years.