Erste Group
 |
|
| Aktiengesellschaft | |
| Traded as |
WBAG: EBS : EBS : EBS |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | 2008 (1819 as the first Austrian savings banks) |
| Headquarters | Vienna, Austria |
|
Area served
|
Central and Eastern Europe |
|
Key people
|
Andreas Treichl (CEO since 2008) |
| Products | Retail and commercial banking, investment and private banking, asset management |
| €1,336 million (first half 2016) | |
| Total assets | €204.5 billion (first half 2016) |
| Total equity | €15.98 billion (first half 2016) |
|
Number of employees
|
46,692 (first half 2016) |
| Website | www.erstegroup.com |
Erste Group Bank AG (Erste Group) is one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe serving 15.7 million clients in over 2,700 branches in 7 countries
Erste Group was founded in 1819 as Erste österreichische Spar-Casse in Leopoldstadt, a suburb of Vienna. After the demise of Communism, the company started a strong expansion into Central and Eastern Europe and by 2008 it had acquired 10 banks. In 1997, it went public and today the company is listed on the exchanges of Vienna, Prague and Bucharest and included in the indices CEETX, ATX and PX.
On the 9th of August 2008, the former Erste Bank Oesterreich was split up into the newly founded holding company Erste Group Bank AG and the subsidiary Erste Bank der österreichischen Sparkassen AG; the foreign subsidiaries were taken over by the new holding company. Erste Group now includes all companies of the Group.
In a ranking by Forbes Magazine of the world's largest stock corporations in 2013, Erste Group Bank came in 672nd place and was third among Austrian companies.
After restructuring and going public, Erste Bank – at the time the uniform organization – embarked on its expansion strategy into Central and Eastern Europe. The first takeover was the Hungarian Mezőbank in 1997. After carrying out another capital increase, the expansion continued. In 2000, majority stakes were acquired in the Czech Česká spořitelna and in the Slovak Slovenská sporiteľňa.
Also in 2000, three small Croatian banks were merged to create Erste & Steiermärkische Bank d.d., following their takeovers as of 1997 by Erste Bank and the Steiermärkische Bank und Sparkassen AG.
In 2003, Riječka banka was merged with Erste & Steiermärkische Bank. The stake owned by Erste in these subsidiaries has been 55.1% ever since.
The acquisition of 61.88% in Banca Comercială Română S.A. (BCR), the largest Romanian bank with 2.8, million customers and 12,000 employees, for EUR 3.751 billion in 2005 was the largest foreign direct investment ever by an Austrian enterprise. The number of the employees at the end of 2008 was 9,985.
In July 2005, Erste Bank signed the purchase agreement for the acquisition of 83.28% of the shares in Novosadska banka a.d., Novi Sad, from the Republic of Serbia. With the acquisition of the bank, Erste Bank entered the Serbian market which promises enormous growth potential.
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Wikipedia