Länderbank
In 1922 its head office was moved to Paris under the name Banque des Pays de l'Europe Centrale (BPEC, German: Zentral-Europäische Länderbank, lit.
It was nationalized in 1946, renamed Österreichische Länderbank AG in 1948, and eventually merged in 1991 with Vienna's Zentralsparkasse to form Bank Austria, which in turn has been a subsidiary of UniCredit since 2005.
The Länderbank was founded on 11 November 1880 as a part-owned subsidiary of Paris-based Union Générale, first chaired by Galician aristocrat Ludwik Wodzicki [pl].
[1] Union Generale's promoter Paul Eugène Bontoux [fr] intended it as a conservative Catholic project against the financial power of the Jewish Rothschild family which led Austria-Hungary's largest bank, the Creditanstalt.
It soon expanded to become a significant institution, financing Austrian industrial projects and the early development of the newly established neighboring countries in the Balkans.
[7] In the financial turmoil that followed the end of World War I in Austria, the Länderbank was recapitalized by a group of French investors led by the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas,[8] in liaison with the Bank of England.
The French investors' support kept it strong enough to survive the crisis of 1929-1932 without Austrian government help, unlike most domestic banks including the Allgemeine Bodencreditanstalt, Creditanstalt, Niederösterreichische Escompte-Gesellschaft, and Wiener Bankverein.
The new Länderbank had 33 branch offices in Vienna (36 after acquisition of the Austrian business of Società Italiana di Credito in 1939), in comparison to 24 for the rival Creditanstalt-Bankverein.
That same year, the Länderbank had 21 branches in Vienna and 12 in other Austrian cities, namely Baden bei Wien, Bludenz, Bregenz, Graz, Innsbruck, Klosterneuburg, Linz, Salzburg, Sankt Pölten, Villach, Wels, Wiener Neustadt, as well as a subsidiary in Eisenstadt.
[17] In practice, that represented a takeover by the City of Vienna,[4] led by Zentralsparkasse general manager René Alfons Haiden [de] who subsequently chaired the merged entity, renamed Bank Austria, until 1995.
The Länderbank's Hungarian affiliate, Ungarische Landesbank), was established in Pest, initially at Palatingasse (now Nador Utca) 9,[22] then in a purpose-built head office nearby at No.
