LaSalle Bank Corp. said Friday that exhaustive research had uncovered ties to the slave era by some predecessors to its Dutch corporate parent, ABN Amro Bank NV.

Although it said its own predecessors were not found to have any connections to slavery, LaSalle deplored the era of slavery and released full results of the study it commissioned.

The company commissioned the independent study by History Associates Inc. in connection with a Chicago ordinance requiring firms that do business with the city to disclose all historic profits from or investments in African slavery.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wachovia Corp. last year became the first companies to acknowledge that their predecessor banks had specific links to the slave trade.

LaSalle said that ABN Amro predecessors in the Netherlands and France traded in securities and goods with slaveholding areas of the U.S. and that its predecessors in the Netherlands, France and Germany had historical connections to African slavery elsewhere in the Americas.

“The era of slavery is a deplorable period in the world’s history,” said LaSalle Chief Executive Norman Bobins. “While predecessors of LaSalle Bank Corp. do not have any historical ties to slavery, it is prudent that we share the full results of the study that we commissioned.”

Chicago Tribune