Austrian banking
Austria has one of the densest banking networks in Europe, with 809 credit institutions operating a total of 4468 branches at the end of 2012 . The number of banks and branches has been steadily declining since the 1990s due to mergers and savings.
In Austria, a distinction is made between banks with single and multi-level sectors, as well as according to their legal form and their affiliation to the respective professional association.
The single-tier sector banks include Aktienbanken , Landes-Hypothekenbanken , Bausparkassen and special banks , the two-tier sector banks include savings banks and Volksbanks , and the three-tier sector banks include Raiffeisen banks .
Within these multi-level sectors there is a coordinated central institute ( central institute), which takes on the coordination and monetary equalization function for the connected area. They are therefore also a hub for doing business with the other sectors.
Erste Bank forms a joint liability association with the 53 Austrian savings banks. Therefore, in the list below, the business figures of the savings banks are included in the figures of Erste-Bank and the large federal state savings banks no longer appear separately in the list of the largest Austrian credit institutions.
Legal provisions
Since the introduction of the German Banking Act (KWG) in 1979, the boundaries between the individual types of credit institution have gradually blurred. Many banks have developed into universal banks that offer a comprehensive range of banking services. Before the Banking Act of 1979 was still the October 1, 1938 in Nazi Germany and in annexed Austria valid for the Austrian Banking Banking Act . The KWG 1979 was created due to the increasing liberalization of the banking system and the general trend towards universal banks. The rapid growth and increased activity of Austrian banks abroad made it necessary to adapt to international standards, which was regulated in the 1986 amendment . On January 1, 1994, the KWG was replaced by the new Banking Act (BWG), which was drawn up with a view to EU conformity and also contains improved provisions for the protection of creditors and consumers . In 2002 the Financial Market Authority (FMA) was founded to oversee the Austrian banking sector.
Banking secrecy
For a long time, Austrian banks have benefited from the very strict Austrian banking secrecy . After joining the EU , the anonymity of savings accounts was abolished, but account contents are still not allowed to be disclosed without a judicial order. However, the exchange of information with foreign authorities to combat international tax evasion is currently (May 2013) being negotiated. The Austrian banks were also able to benefit greatly from the establishment of a dense banking network in Central and Eastern European countries , which was largely achieved through purchases of former state banks. Large shares of the profits of the largest Austrian banks now come from this region.
Banks
| Rank 2015 | Bank | Balance sheet total (billion) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Erste Group Bank | 199.74 |
| 2 | Unicredit Bank Austria 2 | 193.64 |
| 3 | Raiffeisen Central Bank Austria | 138.43 |
| 4th | Raiffeisen Bank International AG | 114.43 |
| 5 | Raiffeisenlandesbank Upper Austria | 37.3 |
| 6th | BAWAG PSK Group | 35.52 |
| 7th | Austrian control bank | 28.78 |
| 8th | Raiffeisenlandesbank Lower Austria-Vienna | 27.74 |
| 9 | Oberbank | 18.24 |
| 10 | Hypo NOE Group | 15.9 |
history
Credit system in Austria until the 19th century
For a long time , Jewish bankers, known as “ court Jews ”, served as the most important donors of the imperial family, since the interest ban applied to Christians . These often served different ruling houses, but sometimes only one, making them dependent on this one. After the Viennese Gesera of 1421 (see also History of the Jews in Austria ), these court factors including household and followers as well as trade correspondents were for a long time among the few Jews "tolerated" by patents in a Christian -anti - Semitic society. From 1672 until his death in 1703, Samuel Oppenheimer, who also worked for German princes, was such a court factor and also an army supplier . During this period he was the most important lender and an important supplier to the Austrian army. Among other things, he financed the Dutch War for Emperor Leopold I and procured military equipment from many European countries, including for the great Turkish war . However, the funds made available as loans by no means came from his own coffers alone. Through intermediaries and suppliers, the (Christian) nobility and high nobility were usually involved to a large extent in the business.
After Oppenheimer's death in 1703, a serious financial crisis arose because the imperial family no longer felt obliged to repay the five million guilders in debt. Oppenheimer's numerous financiers were left with their loans and got into financial difficulties. In order to avoid the financial demands of the creditors, the government declared bankruptcy on Oppenheimer's estate. There was a great flight of capital , the loans to Austria came to a standstill. The President of the Court Chamber, Gundaker Thomas Graf Starhemberg , is said to have described this matter as so damaging to the Habsburg monarchy that "France could not have come up with anything stronger for itself and against the Emperor". The claims of the creditors finally had to be recognized. For this purpose, the Banco del Giro was founded in 1703 as the first bank in Austria, based on the Venetian model . As a purely debt servicing bank with insufficient financial resources, it went bankrupt in 1705. As the successor to the Banco del Giro, the Wiener Stadtbank was founded in 1706 , which also served exclusively to finance the projects of the absolutist rulers.
On August 29, 1703, Oppenheimer's nephew Samson Wertheimer was appointed as the successor to Oppenheimer . This operated exclusively in the money business. He was followed in 1708 by his son Wolf Wertheimer .
Only in the course of the industrial revolution did the banks increasingly take on the role of intermediary between private individuals and business, so that private assets were no longer lying around unused in households, but could be lent to borrowers. In the 19th century , banking gradually began to split into different sectors, each specializing in a specific group of customers.
Age of industrialization and 20th century
When a member of the important German Rothschild banking family, Baron Salomon Meyer von Rothschild, moved to Vienna in 1819 and opened a bank in 1820, the story of the most important credit institution in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and beyond began. The house acted as a commercial bank and financed large industrialization projects in Austria, such as B. the expansion of the northern railway from 1830, and served Bohemian and West Hungarian landed nobles as major creditors. In 1855 his son founded the “ kk privileged Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe ”, or “ Creditanstalt ” for short , which was to remain the most important commercial bank during the entire time of the Danube Monarchy .
The biggest competitor was the Länderbank , founded in 1880 as a subsidiary of a French bank , and with the "Österreichische Alpine Montangesellschaft" in 1881 also founded the largest industrial group in the Alpine region. As early as 1882, the Länderbank broke away from its French mother .
Was founded in 1864 with English capital, the Anglo-Austrian bank , which was acquired in 1926 by the Creditanstalt, and 1863 "was again by French capital General kk privileged soil Credit institute " established that prior to the Great Depression of 1929 also came into serious financial hardship, and was incorporated into the Creditanstalt in 1930 by order of the Federal Government at the time.
Other bank founders - in addition to the aforementioned and other foreign investors - were mostly local nobility or personalities of the upper class at the time of the “banking boom” in the monarchy, which was promoted by the liberal government policy . This secured influence on the economy and politics.
The entire banking landscape changed completely as a result of the First World War , and after the Second World War the most important banks were nationalized by law.
Privatizations and Acquisitions (1990s)
After the Second World War, the banking system in Austria, which was for a long time small-scale in international comparison, emerged after several mergers among the nationalized credit institutions, and a little later after the privatization of these institutions, they also became more profitable and financially stronger. The clear structural change can be seen from the fact that the three largest banks in 1990 (Creditanstalt-Bankverein, Girozentrale, Länderbank) no longer existed as independent banks in 2000. In 1990, Zentralsparkasse merged with Länderbank to form Bank Austria . In 1992 the Girozentrale merged with the ÖCI to form GiroCredit . In 1997 Bank Austria took over the majority of the shares in Creditanstalt , and in the same year GiroCredit was taken over by Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse-Bank , which from then on operated as Erste Bank der Österreichische Sparkassen . In 1998, Creditanstalt was completely taken over by Bank Austria after the remaining shares had been bought up, and the entire company was renamed Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG (BA-CA). The now largest bank in Austria was not to exist independently for long, as HypoVereinsbank (HVB) took over the majority of the shares in 2000 . BA-CA, which made big profits, quickly served as a survival aid for HVB when it slipped into a severe crisis due to large losses. After the BA-CA shares had already been taken off the stock exchange , HVB gave 25% of BA-CA back to the Vienna Stock Exchange a few years later due to the severe financial crisis , where the share rapidly increased in value. The HVB crisis ultimately ended in 2005 with a takeover by the Italian company Unicredit , which decided in January 2007 to take the BA-CA shares off the stock exchange.
The Raiffeisen Group , organized as a cooperative, began to position itself more strongly after some restructuring. The new Banking Act, passed in 1978, stipulated that from 1981 at least two full-time managers must be appointed to run an Austrian bank. This four-eyes principle triggered a wave of mergers among the Raiffeisen banks, which halved the number of independent institutes within five years. By 2007 the number of Austrian Raiffeisen banks had decreased further to 566 (with a total of over 2260 bank branches). The Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB) stepped up its activities in the effects - and real estate business , and Raiffeisen International (RI), a subsidiary was established which is responsible for foreign branches, mainly in Eastern Europe, in charge and has a very dynamic growth. On October 10, 2010, parts of RZB merged with RI to form Raiffeisen Bank International .
A considerable structural change has also taken place in the Austrian savings banks sector since 1997. The Erste Bank has been able to give the Austrian savings banks a largely uniform orientation, thereby achieving an increase in market presence. This was made easier by the participation of the first in some large state savings banks. At the same time, Erste Bank has built up a large network of bank branches in Central and Eastern Europe. Many so-called municipal savings banks, in which the municipalities were not the owners but held the liability, were taken over by larger institutions, whereby the liability municipalities received considerable amounts of compensation. As a result, the number of independent regional savings banks has now fallen to 53.
The largest savings bank in Austria at the time, Bank Austria as the legal successor to the Zentralsparkasse of the municipality of Vienna, has left the savings bank sector. In 2004 she announced her departure from the Sparkassenverband.
Another large bank is the Bank for Labor and Economy (BAWAG), which until 2006 belonged to the ÖGB for the most part . In 2005 it merged with the Austrian Post Savings Bank (PSK). This was an institution under public law until 1997 and was converted into a stock corporation, which was privatized in 2000. The cooperation with Österreichische Post AG (or Post- und Telekom Austria AG) was maintained. The bank continues to be a statutory bank of the federal government ( Section 71 of the Federal Budget Act). In 2005, the embezzlement of bank funds in the amount of two to three billion euros by senior managers became known as the BAWAG affair . Since the ÖGB is liable for the bank's losses, it was forced to sell BAWAG-PSK. The US fund management company Cerberus is the new majority owner . The purchase price was 3.2 billion euros.
In the spring of 2006, the sale of Bank Burgenland was sealed after two unsuccessful attempts to sell. The new owner is the Grazer Wechselseite insurance company , which prevailed against the best bidding Ukrainian consortium. In May 2007, Bayerische Landesbank, BayernLB , became the majority owner of Hypo Group Alpe Adria , with a stake of 50% plus one share.
In the course of the global financial crisis, several banks in Austria were nationalized: In 2008, the state took over Kommunalkredit in view of the high losses on its CDS portfolio, followed by Hypo Group Alpe Adria in 2009 after BayernLB was not ready and able to take over Hypo Group Alpe Adria sufficiently recapitalize. In 2012, Österreichische Volksbanken AG (ÖVAG) was partially nationalized after heavy losses (capital share of the Republic of Austria 43.3%).
Expansion to Eastern and Central Europe (since 1990s)
At the beginning of the 1990s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain , some banks quickly took advantage of the new expansion opportunities in the underdeveloped former Eastern Bloc , especially in the neighboring countries, which gave Austria's banks the opportunity to gain a foothold abroad for the first time. This was never possible in Western Europe, which was economically superior to Austria for a long time and had a traditionally stronger banking sector with a high penetration rate . There, the domestic banks are still limited to regions bordering Austria, namely Bavaria, and otherwise to a few representative bank branches in the major cities, if at all.
With the rapid expansion, the largest domestic banks secured a not insignificant head start over foreign competitors, who for the most part very cautiously expanded into the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Only when the success of the Austrian banks in countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia or Hungary became apparent did more and more foreign credit institutions venture into the Central and Eastern European countries , and the competition became fiercer, which was also due to the ever larger surcharges on the Book value for takeover offers for banks located there. While Eastern European banks could still be taken over in 2001 with a book value multiplier of 1.8, the buying banks have paid more than 2.5 times that amount since 2003, and since 2004 a major Eastern European bank is no longer below its 3 times book value receive. So far, Erste Bank had to pay the largest premium on the book value for its takeover of the Romanian Banca Comercială Română . The fixed takeover price of 3.751 billion euros is the largest foreign investment by an Austrian company to date, even though only 62% will be bought for the time being. The mark-up on the book value given by analysts was 480%, i.e. 5.8 times the book value. Such high premiums are absolutely uncommon in the banking sector and can be explained by the fact that only a few large Eastern European banks are still up for sale, and that all the world's major banks have now become aware of the enormous growth opportunities in the CEEC region .
Austria's banks are the largest donors of all EU countries in the CEEC countries, including Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. At the end of 2012, Austrian banks accounted for 16.1% of the outstanding loans at EU banks totaling 1.44 trillion euros. In second and third place followed Italy with 13.5% and Germany with around 10%. At the beginning of 2012 Austrian banks had 232 billion US dollars (175.8 billion euros) in loans open in this area, which corresponds to 58.4% of Austria's GDP. In view of the financial crisis from 2007 onwards, these facts were sometimes viewed by international economic experts and the media as a threat to Austrian banks and the Austrian economy as such, as large loan defaults can occur in Eastern Europe. Austrian banks counter these fears, however, by referring to the different situation in individual countries, the focus on the “classic banking business” with deposits and loans, the higher profitability and the expected higher growth in this region. The FMA also warned against sharing the little differentiated US view of Eastern Europe as a unified “overall region”.
The largest takeovers of foreign banking institutions by Austrian banks:
- BCR (Romania) by Erste Bank , 2005, EUR 3.751 billion for 62%
- Bank Aval (Ukraine) by Raiffeisen International , 2005, 836 million euros for 93.5%
- Česká spořitelna (Czech Republic) by Erste Bank , 2000/2001, 530 million euros for 87.18% (in several stages)
- Impexbank (Russia) through Raiffeisen International , 2006, 454 million euros for 100% (purchase price may still be reduced after audits)
- Slovenska Sporitelna (Slovakia) by Erste Bank , 2000/2001, 425 million euros for 100% (in several stages)
- Postabank (Hungary) by Erste Bank , 2003, 399 million euros for 99.98%
- Aton Bank (Russia) through Bank Austria , 2006, 322 million euros (424 million US dollars, at the exchange rate in mid-December 2006) for 100%
- Splitska Banka * (Croatia) through Bank Austria , 2002, 132 million euros for 97%
- E-Banka (Czech Republic) by Raiffeisen International , 2006, 130 million euros for 100%
- Banka e Kursimeve e Shqipërisë (Albanian Savings Bank) by Raiffeisen International , 2004, 125 million US dollars for 100%
- Biochim (Bulgaria) through Bank Austria , 2002, 83 million euros for 97%
- Bank Prestige (Ukraine) by Erste Bank , 2006, 79.4 million euros for 100%
- Istrobanka (Slovakia) by BAWAG PSK , 2001, 51 million euros for 100%
* Sold to Societé Générale for around 1 billion euros in 2006.
swell
- ↑ Austria - largest banks by total assets in 2015 | Statistics. Retrieved May 31, 2017 .
- ↑ Christoph Lind: Jews in the Habsburg countries 1670-1848. In: Herwig Wolfram (ed.): Austrian history. Volume 15: History of the Jews in Austria. Ueberreuter Verlag , Vienna 2006, pp. 341–343
- ↑ Lind, 2006, pp. 343-346
- ↑ Contribution of the Postsparkasse to a stock corporation
- ↑ BAWAG PSK on the history of PSK
- ↑ ORF online: Austria's largest lender. (accessed on January 21, 2009)