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).
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.
[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.
[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.