In 1909, ZIBA was one of the founding investors of the Croatian Landesbank in Osijek, which in 1920 was relocated to Zagreb and renamed Jugoslavenska Banka.

On 29 September 1938, as a result of the Munich Agreement in which Czechoslovakia handed over the Sudetenland, Dresdner Bank further took over ZIBA's branches in Liberec, Ústí nad Labem, Karlovy Vary and Teplice.

[2] During Nazi occupation from 1939 and World War II, ZIBA was the only Czech bank that escaped direct annexation by German interests.

It purchased almost a billion crowns' worth of Reich treasury bills, a sum about three times the ZIBA's capital stock.

In June 1939, it fully took over the Czech Bank in Prague at the German authorities' request,[6] and in 1943 similarly absorbed the Böhmische Industriebank.

A London Office of Zivnostenska Banka existed at No.48 Bishopsgate, managed by Bruno Pollack and his deputy Leonard Dunstan.

On 1 August 1956 and unlike with STB, the government restored it as an operating entity,[9]: 28  and made it the primary Czechoslovak bank for Comecon import and export business, in which its London branch played a significant role.

[10] Germany's BHF Bank took up 40% of the shares, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) acquired 12%, and the remaining 48% went to private individuals and Czech investment funds.

At the time, the bank had branches in Prague, Brno, České Budějovice, Karlovy Vary, Liberec, Ostrava, Pardubice and Zlín.

In the late 19th century, ZIBA erected a new head office on the prestigious Na příkopě thoroughfare of Prague, designed by Osvald Polívka and completed in 1900.

In the 1930s, it tore it down and from 1935 to 1942 built a much expanded headquarters designed by architect František Roith [cs], who reused the allegoric sculpture that had crowned Polívka's building.