Powszechny Bank Kredytowy

Powszechny Bank Kredytowy
Bank PBK
TypeState-owned enterprise
IndustryFinancial services
PredecessorNational Bank of Poland
FoundedApril 1988 (1988-04)
Defunct2001 (2001)
FateMerged
SuccessorBank BPH-PBK
Headquarters
Warsaw
,
Poland
Area served
Poland
ProductsBanking services
OwnerPolish State Treasury

Powszechny Bank Kredytowy (lit. 'General Credit Bank'), also known as Bank PBK, was a Polish bank based in Warsaw. It was established in 1988-1989 by spinoff from the National Bank of Poland, and was eventually merged in 2001 with Bank BPH to form Bank BPH-PBK.

History

Bank PBK was one of nine regional banks spun off from the National Bank of Poland, the culmination of a sequence of reforms during the 1980s that brought an end to the country's single-tier banking system.: 18 

It was legally established in April 1988 and started operations on 1 January 1989. Its first president was Ewa Kawecka-Włodarczak [pl]. Its name evoked a former affiliate of Vienna's Länderbank, also named Powszechny Bank Kredytowy (German: Allgemeine Kreditbank), which had been establish in 1910 in Austrian Galicia and relocated from there to Warsaw in 1926.: 261 

On 8 October 1991, Bank PBK was transformed into a joint-stock company, fully owned by the Polish State Treasury.[citation needed] By the mid-1990s it was the seven-largest Polish bank overall behind PKO Bank Polski, Bank Pekao, Bank Handlowy, Bank BGŻ, Bank PBG, and Bank Śląski.: 18  In 1995, Vienna-based Creditanstalt acquired 13 percent of Bank PBK's shares in a partial privatization process. Also in 1995, Bank PBK took a 54.4-percent stake in Górnośląski Bank Gospodarczy (Bank GBG). In 1997, it absorbed operations from the troubled Bank Morski [pl], and in 1998, from Pierwszy Komercyjny Bank w Lublinie [pl].

The ownership stake of Creditanstalt, by then controlled by Bank Austria, in Bank PBK increased to reach 57 percent in 2000. In June of that year, Bank Austria-Creditanstalt announced that it would merge its own Polish subsidiary into Bank PBK. In 2001, Bank Austria had itself come under the control of Munich-based HypoVereinsbank (HVB) which decided to merge Bank PBK with its own Polish subsidiary Bank BPH to form Bank Przemysłowo-Handlowy PBK. The merged entity, also known as Bank BPH-PBK, was the third-largest bank in Poland by assets at the time.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Thomas Smith Mondschean & Timothy Opiela (February 1997), Banking reform in a transition economy: The case of Poland, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
  2. ↑ Krystyna Doliniak (28 March 2012). "Bankowiec w pałacu". Forbes Polska.
  3. ↑ Janusz Kaliński (January 2005). "Austrian banks in Poland up to 1948". Bank Austria Creditanstalt: 150 Jahre österreichische Bankengeschichte im Zentrum Europas. Paul Zsolonay Verlag. pp. 253–267.
  4. ↑ Przemysław Szubański (29 January 1999). "Udana sanacja banku". Parkiet.
  5. ↑ "Ciche zniknięcie głośnego banku". Rzeczpospolita. 23 March 2000.
  6. ↑ "PBK i BA/CA połączą się". Bankier.pl. 13 June 2000.
  7. ↑ "PBK SA - Przyjęcie planu połączenia PBK i BPH". Bankier.pl. 5 June 2001.