History
BA-CA's history goes as far back as 1855, the year the Creditanstalt was founded (see article on Creditanstalt).
In 1991, savings bank Zentralsparkasse und Kommerzialbank der gemeinde Wien and financially depressed, state-owned Österreichische Länderbank merged to form Bank Austria, by then the biggest bank in the country. Current corporation was established in 1996, and German WestLB took a 9,1% share. The same year, the government announced the privitization of Creditanstalt, of which it hold a 51% stake. In January 1997, Bank Austria finally managed to buy the stake for about 1,25 billion euros. In turn, Bank Austria sold a majority stake in GiroCredit 8,24 billion schillings (about 600 million euros) to Erste Bank. In February 1998, the state sold its last shares and the remaining shares on the market were exchanged with shares in Bank Austria, and Creditanstalt was delisted from the Vienna Stock Exchange.
In 2000, HVB Group took over Bank Austria through a share exchange procedure, and Bank Austria was delisted. An assets exchange procedure led to the transfert of HVB's assets in central and eastern Europe to Bank Austria, and reversely. In March 2003, Bank Austria's merger with CreditAnstalt being fully effective, and IPO was offered for the new BA-CA.
In June 2005, Italian group UniCredit disclosed the acquisition of Hypovereinsbank, along with BA-CA. Restructuring led to the creation of a new holding for BA-CA foreign assets in eastern Europe, the transformation of the Polish activity to a full affiliate, the shrinking of BA-CA per se to a smaller market, and the shrinking of HVB to the German market. In order to respect cartel restriction, BA-CA's affiliate Splitska banka had to be sold to Société Générale, for UniCredit already owned Zagrebačka banka, what management was transferred to BA-CA.
In 2006, BA-CA continued its expansion in Russia by acquiring remaining shares in International Moscow Bank and 100% of institutional business of Aton Capital - a Russian brokerage. Moreover, Kazakh bank ATFBank was acquired in 2007.
Since 31 March 2008, the bank has been operating under the brand name "Bank Austria" and they have got a new logo to show the connection to the UniCredit Group. It has the strongest capital base among the large banks in Austria, its Core Tier 1 ratio amounted to 10.55% and its Total Capital ratio to 12.7% as of 31 December 2011.
Read more about this topic: Bank Austria
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