Československá obchodní banka
The Československá obchodní banka a.s. ( ČSOB ; German Czechoslovakian Handelsbank AG ) is a credit institute on the Czech and Slovak financial markets. The bank is owned by the Belgian bank KBC, which is part of the KBC Group NV financial group (owner: 100% shareholders ). She specializes in banking services for both private and corporate customers.
structure
The bank has around 3,200,000 customers (in the Czech Republic around 800,000 directly from ČSOB, around 2.2 million customers from Poštovní spořitelna (Post Office Savings Bank); in Slovakia around 200,000 customers). The bank operates 210 branches in the Czech Republic and 78 in Slovakia. Products from other companies of the ČSOB group of companies can also be purchased in the branches - e. B. Mortgages from the mortgage bank or building society contracts from Českomoravské stavební spořitelna ( Bohemian-Moravian Building Society ).
In May 2007 the new head office was opened in Radlice ( Prague 5 ), where 2,500 employees of the group work.
The chairman of the bank's supervisory board is the economist Jan Švejnar , who ran against incumbent Václav Klaus in the 2008 Czech presidential election.
history
The bank was founded by the socialist Czechoslovakia in 1964 as a specialized bank in the so-called monobank system (Czechoslovak State Bank) and had the task of financing foreign trade under the direct supervision of the state and of taking out foreign currency loans on international markets for the Czechoslovak state. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the bank expanded its services through the then foreign trade operation ("PZO") also for newly founded companies and private customers, and expanded its branch network considerably.
In December 1997, the Czech government decided to privatize the largest banking houses in the Czech Republic. ČSOB was offered for sale in the first tender. In June 1999, the Czech Republic sold its shares in KBC Bank, Belgium, worth CZK 40 billion . In June 2000 Investiční a poštovní banka (IPB, Investitions- und Postbank AG) was taken over after approval by the Czech National Bank . The majority shareholder of IPB, the Japanese Nomura Holdings , subsequently brought arbitration proceedings against the republic, in which compensation for the damage to an investment was demanded under the Czech-Dutch investment protection agreement (Nomura controls IPB through the Saluka company, which is registered in the Netherlands ) . The arbitral tribunal questioned the takeover of IPB by ČSOB, but gave Nomura the opportunity to show the real amount of possible damage in the second round of arbitrage, which did not take place. In the end, Nomura was also not convicted of breaching the contractual terms between Nomura and the Fund for National Property of the Czech Republic. The kausa between Nomura and the Czech Republic was ended by a settlement agreement initiated by Finance Minister Vlastimil Tlustý and subsequently accepted by Topolánek's government in November 2006. To close the whole matter, however, the comparison between Nomura and ČSOB and also between the Czech Republic and ČSOB has not been made. Negotiations are still ongoing. The contracts between Nomura and the Czech Republic were originally supposed to be disclosed by March 2007. On April 26, 2007, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek announced that the contracts would not be disclosed in future either.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Strategy and goals of ČSOB ( memo from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Source: ČSOB press release
