Deutsche Postbank

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The Deutsche Postbank logo.

Postbank AG (ISIN: DE0008001009) is a leading German retail bank with headquarters in Bonn.

1 History
2 Key figures
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The Postscheckdienst was introduced in 1909 by the German Reich establishing accounts for payment transactions by mail and linking postal and banking services in German states.

In 1990, following the German Postal Services Restructuring Act (Poststrukturgesetz) of 1989, the German Postal Service (Deutsche Bundespost) was divided into three companies, Post, Telekom and Postbank. Later that year, Deutsche Post Postbank of the former East Germany was merged with Postbank. From 1990 to 1997, Dr. Guenter Schneider was chairman of the board. The first board of Postbank consisted of Dr. Guenter Schneider, Dr. Rudolf Bauer and Dr. Bernhard Zurhorst.

On January 1, 1995, following the new postal reform legislation (Gesetze zur Postreform II) of 1994, Postbank became an independent, joint stock company. Postbank then extended operations, and engaged in loans, insurance and homes savings.

In 1999, Deutsche Post became the owner of Postbank. In that same year, Postbank acquired DSL Bank by the sale of the government's shares.

Postbank subsidiary easytrade began offering on-line brokerage services in 2000.

Postbank purchased BHF (USA) Holdings Inc. in 2001.

By 2003, Postbank had 11.5 million customers, more than any other bank in Germany.

In January 1, 2004 the postal bank took over the transaction banking of the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank. From then on Postbank executed the clearing and settlement of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank's payment transactions. This agreement strengthened the bank’s new business field "Transaction Bank" in the apron of the announced Initial Public Offering.

The IPO of Postbank on June 23, 2004 was the largest stock market launch in Germany for the past 2 years.

On October 25, 2005 Postbank announced its attention to acquire a 76.4 percent stake of the home financing specialist, Beamten Heimstätten Werk (BHW). With the acquisition of BHW Deutsche Postbank became Germany’s leading financial services provider for retail customers.

In January 1, 2006 the purchase of BHW Holding by Deutsche Postbank was concluded. Beyond that Deutsche Postbank took over 850 branches from Deutsche Post. Along with the change in ownership, around 9,600 employees switched employer, bringing Postbank's workforce to over 25,000 employees.