Creditanstalt

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Creditanstalt AG
Creditanstalt Bank corporate logo
Type Subsidiary of Unicredit
Founded 1855
Headquarters Vienna, Austria
Key people Baron Rothschild, founder
Industry Finance and Insurance
Products Commercial banking, Investment banking, Private banking, Asset management
Revenue bn (as of 2004)
Slogan banking for success
Website www.ba-ca.com/

The Creditanstalt (CA) was an Austrian bank. The Creditanstalt was based in Vienna, founded 1855 as K. k. priv. Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (approximately translated as: Imperial royal privileged Austrian Credit-Institute for Commerce and Industry) by the Rothschild family. Being very successful it became the largest bank of Austria-Hungary. It declared bankruptcy on May 11, 1931, during the Great Depression but was rescued by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Rothschilds and merged with the Wiener Bankverein, thus changing its name to Creditanstalt-Bankverein. It's a very famous bank.

After World War 2 the bank was nationalised, and became mainly a commercial bank and highly involved in Austria's economy, holding stakes in important Austrian companies such as Wienerberger, Steyr-Daimler-Puch, Lenzing AG and Semperit.

In 1997 the state owned shares were sold to Bank Austria (BA), resulting in a crisis in the ruling coalition between SPÖ und ÖVP, since Creditanstalt had to be considered part of the conservative sphere of influence, whereas BA with its roots as Vienna's Central Savings Bank (Zentralsparkasse) was considered standing politically left. The merger was not finished until 2002, with the creation of Bank Austria Creditanstalt, which became part of the German HypoVereinsbank (HVB) group. HVB is currently (As of 2005) in the process of being taken over by UniCredito.

[edit] Literature

  • Aurel Schubert, Michael D. Bordo (ed.). The Credit-Anstalt Crisis of 1931 (Studies in Macroeconomic History). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1992. ISBN 0-521-36537-6
  • Carl E. Schorske. Fin-De-Siecle Vienna : Politics and Culture. Vintage, London. 1980. ISBN 0-394-74478-0


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