Solothurner Kantonalbank

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The Solothurn cantonal bank , the former state bank in the canton of Solothurn (Switzerland), was in the 19th century indirectly from the ruins of the so-called. Bank crash originated and ended in the 1990s for its part in the so-called. Kantonalbank debacle .

The «bank crash»

The original motive for founding the Kantonalbank was primarily the intention to help the canton budget, which had been in deficit for a long time, to generate additional income. With the liquidation of the two banks to be merged to establish KB, Solothurnische Bank and Hypothekarkasse in the 1880s, unexpected grievances came to light. In a first phase, the canton then filed a lawsuit for damages against the two directors Simon Kaiser and Leo Niggli , who were only partially approved by the federal court because the government under Mayor Wilhelm Vigier had also violated supervisory duties. During the "big crash", criminally relevant balance sheet falsification of the incumbent FDP government councilor Jakob Sieber in his additional function as a member of the board of a bankrupt watch company was found, which tore further high losses into the books due to the creditworthiness of the two banks being far too high . Nevertheless, the cantonal bank was finally founded.

The Kantonalbank debacle

The decline of the Solothurner Kantonalbank at the beginning of the 1990s could be traced back to two causes: Own legacy issues, including from business with Werner K. Rey , who was later convicted , as well as the takeover of the ailing bank in Kriegstetten , whose situation turned out to be in retrospect turned out to be worse than assumed. The cantonal bank was subsequently restructured with taxpayers' money and was initially privatized under the name Solothurner Bank SoBa to the Swiss Bank Corporation , which, however, when it merged with the Swiss Bank Corporation to form UBS , was required by the competition commission to sell it by 2003 at the latest. In autumn 2000 it was transferred to Baloise Bank SoBa to Basler Versicherung , from which the bank is now run under the name Baloise Bank SoBa.

literature

  • M. Angst: The Solothurn bank crash , Olten 1986
  • WE Flückiger: Solothurner Kantonalbank - Bank in Kriegstetten, chronology of a collapse , 1997