Bayerische Vereinsbank

Former German bank
Munich head office of Vereinsbank, designed by Wilhelm Martens [de] and erected in two phases 1885-1886 and 1891-1893[1]
The same building in 2018, still used by HypoVereinsbank

The Bayerische Vereinsbank (lit. 'Bavarian Union Bank') was a German bank founded in 1869 in Munich. It developed into one of the largest regional banks in Germany, before merging in 1998 with Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank (also known as Hypo-Bank) to form HypoVereinsbank (HVB).

Overview

The Bayerische Vereinsbank was the result of a private initiative by Munich- and Augsburg-based court bankers, members of the nobility as well as common merchants in 1869, for which King Ludwig II granted a concession to set up a public company limited by shares. Two years later, it received permission for land-financing transactions. Bayerische Vereinsbank was then allowed to carry out mortgage banking business operations in addition to other banking business. By 1930, it was Germany's tenth-largest joint-stock bank with 201 million Reichsmarks in total deposits, behind Deutsche Bank & Disconto-Gesellschaft (4.8 billion), Danat-Bank (2.4 billion), Dresdner Bank (2.3 billion), and Commerz- und Privatbank (1.5 billion), Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft (619 million), Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft (412 million), Barmer Bankverein [de] (366 million), Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt [de] (364 million), and its local peer the Hypo-Bank (272 million).[2]: 354 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Bayerische Vereinsbank started to expand throughout Germany and abroad. In 1971 it acquired the Bavarian State Bank, in 1978 Bankhaus Röchling [de] in Saarbrücken, and in 1991, Bankhaus Friedrich Simon [de] (also known as Simonbank) in Düsseldorf. By 1997, it had become the fifth-largest bank in Germany after Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, WestLB, and Commerzbank.[1] The next year, partly as a defensive move against a possible takeover by Deutsche Bank, it merged with its longstanding rival Hypo-Bank, despite the latter's troubled investments in commercial property.[3]

Leadership

  • 1869–1873: Andreas Siegel
  • 1873–1897: Friedrich Volz
  • 1898–1907: Joseph Pütz
  • 1908–1928: Adolf Pöhlmann
  • 1929–1937: Hans Christian Dietrich
  • 1938–1956: Karl Butzengeiger [de]
  • 1956–1959: Wilhelm Biber [de]
  • 1959–1968: Hans Christoph Freiherr Tucher von Simmelsdorf
  • 1968–1975: Werner Premauer [de]
  • 1975–1990: Maximilian Hackl
  • 1990–1998: Albrecht Schmidt [de]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Richard Winkler. "Bayerische Vereinsbank AG". Historisches Lexikon Bayerns.
  2. ^ P. Barrett Whale (1930), Joint Stock Banking in Germany: A Study of the German Creditbanks Before and After the War (PDF)
  3. ^ "A Bavarian botch-up". The Economist. 3 August 2000.