Schröder, Münchmeyer, Hengst & Co.
Schröder, Münchmeyer, Hengst & Co. ( SMH-Bank for short ) was a German private bank based in Hamburg , created through a merger in 1969.
founding
The SMH Bank was created in October 1969 through the merger of the banking houses Schröder Gebrüder & Co. and Münchmeyer & Co. (both Hamburg) and Friedrich Hengst & Co. (formerly Bankhaus Siegmund Merzbach) ( Offenbach am Main ).
As a result of the merger, SMH-Bank rose to become the third largest private bank in Germany. The owners of the three merged private banks participated in the new bank, Ferdinand-Josef Graf von Galen with 40%, Hans Hermann Münchmeyer with 35%, Manfred Freiherr von Schröder (20%), Hans Lampert (4%) and General Manager Wolfgang Stryj (1st %), the equity amounted to DM 110 million. Your company headquarters was in Hamburg, but the main business focus was in Frankfurt. The majority shareholder Ferdinand-Josef Graf von Galen had married Anita Hengst before the merger, the heiress of the banking house Hengst & Co. Anita Countess von Galen was married to her husband in separate property , which later played a role.
Industrial lending business
The private bank typically focused on customer investments , so the lending business was insignificant. Graf von Galen came into contact with Horst-Dieter Esch , the owner of the rapidly expanding construction machine group IBH-Holding , in October 1979 . At that time, the SMH-Bank had a 83.33% stake in the loss-making concrete pump and asphalt machine manufacturer “Wibau Maschinenfabrik Hartmann AG” - a souvenir from the Schröder bank. When IBH-Holding acquired the “Wibau” stake from SMH-Bank in April 1980, SMH-Bank acquired 7.4% of IBH in return. From then on it acted as the house bank of the IBH Group and financed the future company acquisitions of the IBH Group with bank loans .
After the IBH Group had acquired Hanomag in February 1980 , it rose to become the third party in the world after Caterpillar and Komatsu with a turnover of 2.5 billion DM and 15,000 employees. The British Powell Duffryn (1978; 23.1%), General Motors (January 1981; in a share swap for Terex ; 13.6%) and Deutsche Babcock AG (July 1982; 10.1%) participated in the IBH. so that company owner Esch only held 9% of his company in 1982. The global construction crisis also affected the construction machinery trade and thus the IBH Group. In addition, internal reasons intensified the increasing corporate crisis in the IBH group. Fundamental restructuring and rapid integration of the acquired companies were not carried out consistently enough, and potential synergies were hardly realized. In 1982 the IBH group had to cope with losses of DM 212 million.
The IBH loan volume at the SMH-Bank totaled 898 million DM in November 1983. The SMH-Bank, under the direction of Count von Galen, had to write off its loans to the IBH largely as a bad debt loss when its borrower IBH-Holding collapsed in November 1983 . This loan volume reached eight times the equity capital of the bank, which had bypassed the large loan regulations because the IBH loans of the Luxembourg SMH subsidiary (DM 473 million) did not have to be included in large loans due to a legal loophole. According to the regulations at the time, only 75% of the own funds could be lent to a single borrower .
Bank crisis
As a result, the SMH-Bank also got into a crisis, because the SMH-Bank had to cope with a write-off of DM 830 million because of the IBH loans. In November 1983, 20 German banks frantically undertook a joint rescue operation. The SMH-Bank, which got into a corporate crisis, was supported with 490 million DM by converting bank loans from other banks into silent partnerships . In addition, the deposit protection fund provided support with DM 345 million, so that the loss was covered. The general partner of the SMH Bank became a specially founded general partner GmbH of the deposit protection fund. The crisis was the second largest banking crisis in Germany after the insolvency of the Herstatt Bank . The crisis at SMH-Bank had criminal consequences for those involved. In December 1984 von Galen, Lampert and Stryj had to be remanded in custody , the latter were released in August 1985. While Esch was sentenced in November 1984 by the Koblenz Regional Court to 6 ½ years in prison and a fine of 90,000 DM for fraud, embezzlement and bankruptcy, von Galen received 3 years and 9 months in prison. Lampert and Stryj also received prison sentences. The marital property of the Count von Galen could not be used under civil law because of the separation of property.
New shareholders
Only a few investors left the still functioning bank, so the search for a bank to take over began. On December 11, 1983, the British Lloyds Bank took over the SMH Bank with the exception of the liabilities to the IBH Holding . In April 1997, UBS acquired the re-stabilized SMH-Bank and changed its legal form to AG . Now the former SMH bank focused on wealthy private clients and investment banking . From November 2001 it operated as UBS Private Banking Deutschland AG , then since July 2003 as UBS Wealth Management AG and since June 2005 as UBS Deutschland AG . It employs 1,300 people at its 9 German locations and is aiming for a significant market position in the German market for wealthy private customers.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ DER SPIEGEL 48/1983 of November 28, 1983, Mal hinterhaken , p. 115 f.
- ↑ FAZ of December 14, 1983, comparative quota could not be achieved
- ↑ Süddeutsche.de of May 17, 2010, Machines and Girls
- ↑ DER SPIEGEL 46/1984 of November 14, 1983, You have to have a feel for banking , p. 124 f.
- ↑ Rüdiger Liedtke, Scandal-Chronik , 1987, p. 88
- ↑ DER SPIEGEL 40/14989 of October 2, 1989, formally correct , p. 145
- ↑ Michael Spreiter (Ed.), Private Banking: Customer Loyalty and Earnings Increase in Practice , 2015, p. 15