Creditanstalt-Bankverein

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Creditanstalt-Bankverein

logo
legal form Corporation
founding October 31, 1855
resolution 2002
Seat Vienna , Austria
Branch Universal bank
Website www.ba-ca.com

The Creditanstalt-Bankverein (short: CA-BV, CA) was an Austrian bank . The institute, founded in 1855, merged with Bank Austria in 2002 .

In Austria, even after the merger with the Bankverein in 1934, the bank was always referred to as the CA.

The headquarters of the bank was the building known today as the Haus am Schottentor .

history

founding

Front page of the Wiener Zeitung on November 7, 1855 with the announcement of the establishment of the credit institution
CAFHUG (= Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe) on the former Creditanstalt building, Freyung 8 / Renngasse 2, 1010 Vienna (now the Constitutional Court )
Former headquarters of Creditanstalt in Schottengasse (from 1934)
View of the cash desk in the Vienna headquarters

The establishment of the Creditanstalt was followed by the establishment of the bank SM v. Rothschild in Vienna by Salomon Meyer Freiherr von Rothschild in 1820. His bank played a major role in the financing of industrialization projects in the Austrian Empire . For example, the credit institute financed the expansion of the northern railway from 1830, the manufacture of railway tracks and the construction of coke ovens . In addition to good relations with the then State Chancellor Clemens Fürst Metternich and his colleague Friedrich von Gentz , the bank also held the Bohemian and West Hungarian nobility as large borrowers.

In 1855 SM v. Rothschild under Salomon's son Anselm founded the kk privileged Austrian credit institution for trade and commerce based on the model of the French Crédit Mobilier (official spelling initially: credit ...). Involved in this establishment together with Rothschild were the Bohemian aristocrats Johann Adolf Fürst Schwarzenberg , Vincenz Karl Fürst von Auersperg , Max Egon Fürst zu Fürstenberg and Otto Graf Chotek , as well as the Karlsruhe banker and industrialist Louis von Haber , who is well established in Bohemia, and the Prague banker Leopold from Lämel . This consortium received political support from the Austrian Finance Minister Karl Ludwig von Bruck . On October 31, 1855, the statutes were approved by imperial decree, on November 7, 1855, they were published in the newspapers and a quarter of the capital was offered to the public for subscription.

The building at Renngasse 1, also known as the Hotel Zum Römischen Kaiser and acquired by Salomon von Rothschild in 1844, served as the provisional seat . In 1860 the institute moved to the newly built Bankpalais Am Hof 6 (architect: Franz Fröhlich ).

This economic bank was very successful and became the largest bank in Austria-Hungary. A key decision-maker was Anselm's son Albert von Rothschild , who held around 15 percent of the shares and was represented on the bank's management bodies by confidants such as Max von Gomperz and Gustav von Mauthner . In 1911, Albert's son Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild inherited from his successful father. Another new building followed in 1914–1921 at Freyung 8 / Renngasse 2 (design: Ernst Gotthilf and Alexander Neumann ).

First republic

The entire banking system in Austria , which had become small, was already characterized by crises and disputes around the mid-1920s. The Allgemeine Bodencreditanstalt, headed by Rudolf Sieghart , and the state-owned Austrian Post Office Savings Bank had to step in as saviors several times. The Creditanstalt had also taken over the ailing Anglo-Austrian Bank in 1926 .

Even before the stock market crash in New York at the end of October 1929, the Bodencreditanstalt, which had previously acted as a savior, became de facto insolvent when its associated industrial group around the Steyr-Werke ran into problems. In early October 1929, the Federal Government Schober III under Johann Schober forced the Creditanstalt to assume the obligations of the Bodencreditanstalt.

The global economic crisis triggered by the stock market crash on October 24, 1929 on the New York Stock Exchange dealt a severe blow to the banking industry. The Creditanstalt was burdened several times by the serious crisis in the banking sector and even became a restructuring case.

On May 8, 1931, the undisputed largest Austrian credit institution since 1929 had to report a loss of 140 million schillings for 1930 and declared its insolvency on May 11, 1931 . This started a banking crisis that spread to all of Central Europe and the real economy. Since the Creditanstalt looked after the majority of all Austrian industrial companies, their restructuring was absolutely necessary for the government under Federal Chancellor Otto Ender (see also system relevance ).

A new foreign loan was necessary for the reconstruction. For this purpose the First Creditanstalt Act of May 14, 1931 was enacted. It contained a guarantee for foreign creditors. In addition, the debts were divided: the state took over 100 million schillings and the bank SM v. 30 million each . Rothschild as major shareholder and the Oesterreichische Nationalbank . The Social Democrats advocated the nationalization of the bank, but could not prevail.

On May 28, 1931, with the Second Creditanstalt Act , the National Council gave the federal government power of attorney to assume liability for Creditanstalt's debts. The loss of 150 million schillings in the budget was raised through savings measures in civil servants' salaries, through the introduction of the salary tax and through increases in coffee and tobacco tariffs. The Social Democrats also approved this measure. The rescue of the Creditanstalt should have cost almost a billion schillings by 1933.

In 1934, the Creditanstalt was from the now authoritarian ruling Federal Government under Engelbert Dollfuss with the Viennese bank association for Austrian Creditanstalt - Wiener Bank Corporation merged and moved to the main building at Schottentor . The Lower Austrian Escompte Society , d. H. their mobile banking activities have been integrated into the CA. With this, the emergency nationalization by a regime that was otherwise by no means economically oriented was completed. From 1936 the general director of the major bank was called Josef Joham .

time of the nationalsocialism

With the "connection" to the German Reich , the bank was fundamentally reshaped again.

With the arrest of Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild in 1938 and his subsequent forced emigration, the bank's 118-year association with the Rothschilds also ended. The bank's numerous Jewish employees were dismissed within a short time; the majority of the shares in the bank were first transferred to a holding company of the German Reich and then to Deutsche Bank . In 1939 the bank was renamed Creditanstalt-Bankverein . Leading force on the Board remained Josef Joham which, under the benevolent patronage of Hermann Josef Abs wanted to restore the 1,918 lost role of the CA in the countries of South Eastern Europe, trying to keep intact as possible the industrial group of the bank before takeover desires from the "Old Reich".

Under the rule of the Nazi regime , the bank maintained business relationships with at least 13 concentration camps , from which the bank regularly received death lists - including from Auschwitz - and charged usury fees for money transfers from relatives to concentration camp prisoners. Creditanstalt also played a major role in the " Aryanization " of the Sascha film industry . She took over the politically oppressed company at an unrealistically low value of 1000 Schillings and then transferred the shares to Cautio Treuhand , a company controlled by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels .

There were some resistance members in high and high positions in the CA group . The general director of Semperitwerke, Franz Josef Messner , worked with the US secret service OSS (arrested in spring 1944; murdered on April 23, 1945). Josef Joham reported to the OSS by September 1943 at the latest and remained undiscovered.

Second republic

After the Second World War , the bank was nationalized on the basis of the First Nationalization Act of 1946, which transferred all equity interests to the Republic of Austria. Former owners were compensated, provided that it was not a question of former "German property". General director was again, as in the times of the “ corporate state ” Josef Joham , who also held an influential position in the ÖVP economic association . Joham, who remained a board member of the institute during the Nazi period, remained at its head until 1959 and maintained a rather cautious corporate policy.

The bank continued to be primarily active in the business with major customers and primarily focused on financing its own industrial group. Their investments in important Austrian companies included B. Wienerberger building materials industry, Steyr Daimler Puch AG , Donau Chemie AG , Lenzing AG , Semperit AG and Universale Bau .

From 1956 the state's share in the bank was reduced. 40% of the shares were privatized through the issue of so-called people's shares , but only 10% in ordinary shares with voting rights and 30% in non-voting preference shares . From 1964, the bank turned increasingly to the private customer business. Joham's successor Erich Miksch continued the cautious line of his predecessor. In 1970 Heinrich Treichl became General Director of what was then still the largest bank in Austria. He focused on expansion and strengthening foreign business. In the mid-1970s, Creditanstalt-Bankverein (CA-BV) was one of the hundred largest banks in the world. With the industrial group, especially with Steyr-Daimler-Puch and Semperit, there were growing problems again in view of the strong international tendencies towards concentration in the vehicle and tire industries.

In 1981, the long-standing finance minister Hannes Androsch was appointed to succeed Heinrich Treichl at the head of the CA. The SPÖ politician, who got into conflict with his former sponsor Bruno Kreisky and was burdened by a tax affair, was initially considered an outsider in the CA, which was more in the "black half of the empire". However, Androsch succeeded in relieving the bank balance sheet through a restructuring package for the bank's industrial group with 7.3 billion schillings (more than 500 million euros) from tax revenues. Most of the Semperit stake was transferred to the German Continental AG in 1985 , which provided a ten-year guarantee for employment. Continental had already shown interest in taking over Semperit during the Nazi period.

In the 1980s, the bank stepped up its foreign activities and branches were opened in London , New York and Hong Kong , among others . By 1987 the state share had also fallen to 51%. This year, Hannes Androsch was succeeded by Guido Schmidt-Chiari as General Director. Since the 1990s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain , the bank has also continuously expanded its market presence in Central and Eastern European countries . At the beginning of the 1990s, however, serious problems arose in international business and, in some cases, also with domestic loans. In the mid-1990s, the bank was already seen by insiders as a takeover candidate. In 1996 the CA owned 81 foreign branches and 255 Austrian branches and several subsidiary banks worldwide.

privatization

Logo after the merger with Bank Austria

Since the mid-1980s, several coalition governments tried to privatize the ÖVP- affiliated bank, which naturally met with fierce opposition from this very party. In 1991 the National Council passed a legal authorization for the finance minister to sell the federal shares in the bank. In the period that followed, the manner in which the privatization was to be carried out was the subject of heated debate - the SPÖ- led Ministry of Finance wanted the shares to be sold “in one piece”, while the ÖVP-led Ministry of Economics proposed a sale on the Vienna Stock Exchange.

The actual privatization took place in 1997, when 69.45% of the voting rights were sold to Bank Austria, which is close to the SPÖ . Bank Austria, at that time already the largest bank in Austria, had this takeover cost 17.2 billion schillings, the equivalent of around 1.25 billion euros. This sale then led to a crisis in the coalition between the SPÖ and ÖVP.

In 2001, Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank (HVB) bought Bank Austria and thus Creditanstalt, which in 2002 resulted in the merger between Bank Austria (BA) and Creditanstalt-Bankverein (CA) to form Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA). In 2005 HVB, and thus also BA-CA, was taken over by the Italian banking group Unicredit . After the declaration of intent on September 20, 2007, from the end of March 2008 the name Creditanstalt was finally removed from the lettering of Bank Austria as part of a brand adjustment to the Unicredit Group. Since then, the bank has been operating as Unicredit Bank Austria AG, which, after the structural change, also ended the existence of Creditanstalt by name after more than 152 years.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roman Sandgruber : Rothschild. Glory and decline of the Viennese world house . Molden Verlag, Vienna 2018, pp. 129–132
  2. ↑ a b Creditanstalt-Bankverein in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna , accessed on February 4, 2020
  3. ^ Roman Sandgruber: Rothschild. Glory and decline of the Viennese world house . Molden Verlag, Vienna 2018, p. 222
  4. ↑ Ernst Gotthilf. In: Architects Lexicon Vienna 1770–1945. Published by the Architekturzentrum Wien . Vienna 2007.
  5. ^ A b Arnold Suppan : Yugoslavia and Austria 1918–1938. Bilateral foreign policy in the European environment. Verlag für Geschichte u. Politics, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-486-56166-9 , p. 1047 f.
  6. ↑ Federal law of May 14, 1931 on the reconstruction of the Oesterreichische Credit-Anstalt for trade and commerce and on the amendment of certain provisions of the statutes of the Austrian National Bank . In: Federal Law Gazette for the Republic of Austria , No. 136/1931, May 16, 1931, pp. 655 ff.
  7. ^ Eduard Heinl : Over half a century, time and economy . Braumüller, Vienna 1948, p. 244.
  8. ↑ Federal law of May 28, 1931 on the assumption of federal liability for loans to the Oesterreichische Credit-Anstalt . In: Federal Law Gazette for the Republic of Austria , No. 143/1931, May 29, 1931, p. 671 ff.
  9. ↑ this emerges from the archives of Deutsche Bank

literature

  • Karl Ausch : When the banks fell - on the sociology of political corruption. Vienna 1968.
  • Gerald D. Feldman , Oliver Rathkolb , Theodor Venus, Ulrike Zimmerl: Austria's banks and savings banks during National Socialism and in the post-war period . Volume 1: Creditanstalt-Bankverein . CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-55158-0 .
  • Klaus Grubelnik: The red octopus - a bank is conquering Austria. 2nd Edition. Molden, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85485-005-0 .
  • Eduard März : Austrian industrial and banking policy in the time of Franz Joseph I - using the example of the kk privileged Austrian Credit Institution for trade and commerce. Vienna 1963.
  • Eduard März: Austrian banking policy in the time of the great turning point 1913–1923. Using the example of the Credit Institute for Commerce and Industry. Vienna 1981.
  • Fritz Weber : Before the big row. The crisis of the Austrian banking system in the twenties. Habilitation thesis, University of Salzburg 1991 ( OCLC 54448568 ).
  • The Austrian economist . No. 1/1908 ff. (Especially 22 / 1929-25 / 1932).

Web links

Commons : Creditanstalt-Bankverein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files