Creditanstalt

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Creditanstalt AG
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)
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.

After World War II 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 has now been 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-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Vintage, London. 1980. ISBN 0-394-74478-0