Legiobanka

It was founded in Irkutsk in 1919 to serve the financial needs of the Czechoslovak Legion and prospered in subsequent years thanks to its strong patriotic associations.

Under Nazi occupation during World War II, it was renamed Czecho-Moravian Bank in Prague (Czech: Českomoravská banka v Praze) between 1940 and 1945.

[2] A key figure for the establishment of both institutions was František Šíp [cs], a legionnaire officer responsible for the logistics and financing of the approximately forty thousand-strong legionary army in Russia.

In addition to its head office, it had four local branch offices in Prague and 17 local branches in the rest of the country, in Berehovo, Bratislava, Brno, Duchcov, Hradec Králové, Jihlava, Kolín, Louny, Lovosice, Ostrava, Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Olomouc, Piešťany, Plzeň, Poprad, Turnov, and Zvolen.

In 1943, it was designated for merger with Kreditanstalt der Deutschen, a cooperative bank of the German community in Prague that had been established in 1911,[4] but that plan was not carried out.