KBC Bank

KBC Bank

KBC Bank N.V. is a Belgian universal multi-channel bank, focusing on private clients and small and medium-sized enterprises. Besides retail banking, insurance and asset management activities (in collaboration with sister companies KBC Insurance NV and KBC Asset Management NV), KBC is active in European debt capital markets, domestic cash equity markets and in the field of corporate banking, leasing, factoring, reinsurance, private equity and project and trade finance in Belgium, Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere (mainly in Europe). KBC is an initialism for Kredietbank ABB Insurance CERA Bank.

The parent company, KBC Group N.V., is one of the major companies and the second largest bancassurer in Belgium. It is the 18th largest bank in Europe (by market capitalisation) and a major financial player in Central and Eastern Europe, employing some 51,000 staff worldwide (of which 31,000 in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia) and serving 11 million customers worldwide (some 8 million in Central and Eastern Europe).

The group is controlled by a syndicate of core shareholders, but has a free float of some 41%. In the core shareholders, KBC Ancora/Cera group controls 30%(23%/7%), MRBB (a farmers' association) controls around 13% and a group of industrialist families controls another 11%. The free float was chiefly held by a large variety of international institutional investors (close to 45% UK-or US-based) as of the end of 2010. Its shares are traded on the Euronext exchange in Brussels and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange.

The group's overall aim is to be an independent, medium-sized provider of bancassurance for private clients and enterprises in selected European countries, with a focus on asset management and in financial markets.