Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband

Germany's savings banks, owned by local governments, play a major role in the country's economy, together operating some 15,860 branches and employing about 284,800 people.

[3]: 102 on 26 October 1916 during World War I, the Deutscher Zentralgiroverband was established to coordinate the regional payments clearing houses or Giroverbände (lit.

[4] Unlike the prior DSGV in Berlin, it was not a public corporation (German: Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts, abbreviated as ö.K.)

[4] In April 2011, DSGV took control of DekaBank, buying a 50 percent stake from the Landesbanken, public sector banks such as HSH Nordbank, WestLB and SachsenLB [de] that stumbled badly during the financial crisis.

After years of subsidising the activities of the Landesbank sector, savings banks have been more assertive about ending the Wall Street-style ambitions of some of these regional lenders.