How many companies can say they were founded during the George Washington administration (his first term, at that)? Very few, but one of them is State Street Corp. (NYSE: STT). The Boston-based bank now has offices in 25 countries around the world, and has weathered the recent financial storms better than most of its younger competitors.

The stock is down in recent weeks, for reasons having more to do with an investigation of former executives than anything related to the bank’s market position. Given the ongoing strength of the firm’s fundamentals, this represents a buying opportunity.

State Street has consistently done well in the examinations that the Federal Reserve conducts, which increased in frequency in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. It has also been a consistent winner in terms of the returns that it provides to investors, particularly through dividends.

State Street is one of the world’s leading providers of financial services to institutional investors, including investment servicing, investment management and investment research and trading. With $27.8 trillion in assets under custody and administration and $2.5 trillion in assets under management, State Street operates in more than 100 markets worldwide, spanning the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

In its most recent earnings report (third quarter of 2014), earnings per share came in at $1.26, an increase from $1.17 in the third quarter of 2013. Total revenue of $2.58 billion also was up from $2.43 billion in the third quarter of 2013.

Joseph L. Hooley, State Street’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said, “Our third-quarter results demonstrated good growth in asset servicing and asset management fees, which together were up 9 percent from the third quarter of 2013, reflecting improved equity markets and new business. Our market-driven revenues also performed well in a traditionally seasonally slow quarter. We won new business commitments of $302 billion of assets to be serviced and had $3 billion of net new assets to be managed during the quarter demonstrating the continued strength of our business.”

One of the things that differentiates State Street from its competitors is its strong dividend performance. The company bought approximately 8 million shares of common stock during the fourth quarter, and 24.7 million shares since April 1, 2013, under the current $2.1 billion common stock purchase program effective through March 2015. 

The bank raised its dividend at least once a year between 1995 and 2001, with the frequency doubling over the period from 2001 to 2008.  State Street’s focus on returning money to investors in recent years is demonstrated by the fact that the custody bank has repurchased almost $3.5 billion worth of shares over 2012-2013. As a direct result, the average number of its outstanding shares has fallen more than 10% from about 500 million in 2011 to under 450 million in 2013.

State Street is in a fierce battle with Vanguard, BlackRock and others for the lucrative ETF market. So far, State Street’s expansion plans have proceeded successfully.

State Street Global Advisors (State Street), the firm’s asset management arm, and MFS Investment Management, an active global asset manager, recently announced a strategic partnership to collaborate on exchange traded product development. Three new ETFs developed through this partnership, SPDR MFS Systematic Core Equity ETF (Symbol: SYE), SPDR MFS Systematic Value Equity ETF (Symbol: SYV) and SPDR MFS Systematic Growth Equity ETF (Symbol: SYG) began trading on NYSE Arca on January 9, 2014. These ETFs offer MFS’ disciplined stock selection and portfolio construction process in an exchange traded fund (ETF) structure. 

“We’re pleased to be working with MFS to provide a broader universe of investors with access to strategies that deliver active security selection with a focus on managing downside risk,” said James Ross, executive vice president and global head of SPDR ETFs at State Street Global Advisors. “The partnership is further evidence of our commitment to working closely with best-in-class asset managers to build on the SPDR ETF line-up and offer active strategy solutions to help investors achieve better investment outcomes.”

The SPDR MFS Systematic Core Equity ETF (benchmark: S&P 500 Index), SPDR MFS Systematic Value Equity ETF (Russell 1000 Value Index) and SPDR MFS Systematic Growth Equity ETF (Russell 1000 Growth Index) are all designed to seek to outperform their respective benchmarks over a full market cycle by applying a consistent, disciplined bottom-up stock selection and portfolio construction process. The selection process is a systematic combination of MFS fundamental and quantitative research.

As it continues to expand toward new horizons, State Street is one of the more consistent performers you can buy in this often-volatile sector. The stock is a buy up to 80.

Tom Scarlett is an investment analyst at Personal Finance and its parent web site Investing Daily.