Dresdner Bank
Parent Commerzbank | | |
Website | www |
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Dresdner Bank AG was a German bank, founded in 1872 in Dresden, then headquartered in Berlin from 1884 to 1945 and in Frankfurt from 1963 onwards after a postwar hiatus. Long Germany's second-largest bank behind Deutsche Bank, it was eventually acquired by Commerzbank in May 2009.
1872-1933
The Dresdner Bank was established on 12 November 1872 through the conversion of
In the 1870s, the Dresdner Bank acquired smaller regional institutes and several banks. In 1881, it opened a branch in Berlin, whose activity quickly exceeded the nominal head office in Dresden. Therefore, the registered office moved to Berlin in 1884, while the place of jurisdiction remained in Dresden until 1950.[citation needed] In 1889, together with Deutsche Bank and others, the Dresdner Bank participated in the creation of Deutsch-Asiatische Bank in Shanghai, and in 1894 of Banca Commerciale Italiana in Milan.[1]: 445 It also developed its own overseas-oriented network by opening branches in Hamburg (1892, when it absorbed the Anglo-Deutsche Bank), Bremen (1895), and London (1901).[1]: 493
In 1905 Dresdner formed a close alliance with
By end-1908, Dresdner Bank was the second-largest German joint-stock bank by total deposits, with a total of 225 million Marks surpassed only by Deutsche Bank (489 million) and well ahead of Disconto-Gesellschaft (219 million) and Darmstädter Bank (109 million).[1]: 209 At that time, Dresdner Bank was referred to as one of the four "D-Banks" (all of which had names starting with a D) that dominated German commercial banking, together with Darmstädter Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Disconto-Gesellschaft.[3]: 13
During the
By 1930, Dresdner Bank was Germany's third-largest joint-stock bank by total deposits with 2.3 billion Reichsmarks, behind
As a consequence of state intervention during the
Nazi era
Following Adolf Hitler's assumption of power in 1933, the Dresdner Bank, which had been founded by a Jewish banker, Eugen Gutmann, fired all 600 Jewish employees, including board members as well as bank clerks, and cancelled or confiscated their pensions. In May of 1933, "Nazi brownshirts swarmed into the lobby of the Dresdner headquarters and smashed the bronze bust of Eugen to the ground." The bank was declared "Judenrein' ("cleansed" of Jews) and became a tool of Hitler's Nazi regime.[7]
The "Aryanized" bank fully participated in the Nazi regime's
After the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, Dresdner Bank on 15 June 1938 acquired ownership of Vienna-based Länderbank through its local subsidiary the Mercurbank, in a transaction forced under duress.[9] The Prague-based Živnostenská Banka's Austrian subsidiary was simultaneously subsumed in the merged entity, renamed Länderbank Wien AG. The new Länderbank had 33 branch offices in Vienna (36 after acquisition of the Austrian business of Società Italiana di Credito in 1939), in comparison to 24 for the rival Creditanstalt-Bankverein that had come under control of Deutsche Bank.
Later in 1938 following the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland, Dresdner Bank, through Länderbank Wien, took over the former branches of the Böhmische Escompte-Bank in the South Moravian towns of Břeclav (German: Lundenburg), Mikulov (German: Nikolsburg) and Znojmo (German: Znaim).[10] In subsequent years, most of the Länderbank's resources were used to finance the Nazi war effort,[11] while in March 1939, Dresdner Bank acquired control of Böhmische Escompte-Bank.
During World War II, Dresdner Bank took over the Böhmische Escompte-Bank in Prague, the Societatea Bancară Română in Bucharest, the Handels- und Kreditbank in Riga, and the Kontinentale Bank in Brussels. It also maintained majority control of the Kommerzialbank in Kraków, Deutsche Handels- und Kreditbank in Bratislava, Banque Bulgare de Commerce in Sofia, and founded the Handelstrust West N. V. in Amsterdam.[citation needed] Following the invasion of Yugoslavia and proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia, Dresdner Bank took a 53 percent stake in Jugoslavenska Banka, renamed Kroatische Landesbank by court order of 3 June 1941.[12]: 94 Also in 1941, Dresdner Bank took over management control of the Bank of Athens during the Axis occupation of Greece, without however taking ownership out of consideration for Italian sensitivities.[13] In September 1941, Dresdner Bank appropriated a block of shares owned by Union européenne industrielle et financière, an affiliate of the French Schneider-Creusot group, in the Hungarian General Credit Bank.[14]: 221
Dresdner Bank helped to finance concentration camps, including
As a result of World War II 80% of the bank's buildings were destroyed, costing the bank 162 offices in 56 locations.
1945-2002
Following the end of World War II in Europe, the chairman of the bank's supervisory board, Carl Goetz , was arrested by the American occupation forces and held in custody until late 1947. Karl Rasche, the bank's former chief executive (German: Vorstandssprecher) since 1942, was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.[16] The Deutsche Orientbank, Dresdner Bank's Turkish subsidiary, was liquidated in 1946.[17]
On 30 July 1977 in
Dresdner Bank expanded its network with acquisition and opening new offices not only in Europe but also in the United States, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and China. Dresdner Bank was the first to open its own office in former
In 1999, Dresdner Bank and
Takeover by Allianz
In 2002 Dresdner Bank became a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance corporation
In 2008 it was reported that Allianz was looking to dispose of Dresdner Bank. British banking group
Takeover by Commerzbank
On August 31, 2008, Commerzbank announced that it would acquire Dresdner Bank for EUR 9.8 billion.[23] Dresdner Bank was legally merged with Commerzbank on 11 May 2009 and ceased to be an independent entity.[24]
In 2009, Deutsche Bank announced it will integrate the Dresdner Agency Security Lending business into its trust and securities services (TSS) business in global transaction banking (GTB).[25]
Dresdner Bank attempted to get a banking operating license in
The bank has had a lucrative business relationship with Gazprom and the state oil company Rosneft. The bank advised on the forced sale of Yukos assets.[38]
In 2017, Frankfurt prosecutors, together with federal crime police and tax officials, conducted searches of Commerzbank offices as well as the flats of three suspects in Frankfurt and nearby Hanau about a "tax evasion probe in which several current and former managers are suspected of evading 40 million euros ($47 million) in taxes via dividend stripping, also known as "cum-ex" transactions".[39] The investigation also extends to trades in 2008 at Dresdner Bank, which was taken over by Commerzbank in 2009.[39]
See also
- Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt
- Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
- The Holocaust
- Nuremberg Laws
- Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany
- Jakob Goldschmidt
Notes
- ^ Lazar Matveev served as a senior KGB liaison officer to the Stasi in Dresden, East Germany, during 1982 to 1989, and was the boss of Vladimir Putin and his former KGB colleagues Sergey Chemezov and Nikolay Tokarev.[26]
- ^ Vladimir Putin, KGB, recruited Mathias Warnig, Stasi, because the Stasi had West German spies and the KGB wanted to develop its own spy network in West Germany by recruiting Stasi West German spies into the KGB.[27]
- ^ In 1990, Banque nationale de Paris (BNP) entered into an alliance with Dresdner Bank.[28] This alliance to enter the Eastern European markets continued until December 2000.[37]
References
- ^ a b c d Jacob Riesser (1911), The German Great Banks and Their Concentration in connection with The Economic Development of Germany (PDF), Washington DC: National Monetary Commission
- ^ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). . Encyclopedia Americana.
- ^ Federal Reserve Board (March 1945), Army Service Forces Manual M356-5 / Military Government Handbook – Germany – Section 5: Money and Banking, Washington DC: U.S. Army Service Forces
- ^ P. Barrett Whale (1930), Joint Stock Banking in Germany: A Study of the German Creditbanks Before and After the War (PDF)
- ^ a b Germà Bel (February 2010), "Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930s Germany", Economic History Review (63:1): 34–55
- ^ Federal Reserve Board (November 1943), Army Service Forces Manual M360-5 / Civil Affairs Handbook Austria - Section 5: Money and Banking, Washington DC: U.S. Army Service Forces
- ISBN 978-1-4516-9764-3.
- ^ a b "Hitler's Willing Bankers". Spiegel Online International.
- ^ "Mercurbank". Wien Geschichte Wiki.
- ^ "Überblick 1938-1945". Bank Austria.
- ^ "Österreichische Länderbank". Wien Geschichte Wiki.
- ^ Federal Reserve Board (February 1944), Army Service Forces Manual M355-5 / Civil Affairs Handbook Yugoslavia: Money and Banking, Washington DC: U.S. Army Service Forces
- ^ Hein A.M. Klemann & Sergei Kudryashov (2012). Occupied Economies: An Economic History of Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1939-1945. Berg.
- ^ Tamás Kovács (October 2017), "The swan song of the Hungarian General Credit Bank" (PDF), Economy and Finance (GÉP), 4:3, Budapest: Hungarian Banking Association
- ^ "Report: German Bank Helped Build Auschwitz". Deutsche Welle.
- ^ Ralf Ahrens (2005), Cleansing Corporate History as Constructing Corporate Identity: The Case of Dresdner Bank after World War II (PDF), European Business History Association
- ^ "Die Deutsche Orient-Bank". Deutsche Vertretungen in der Türkei.
- ISBN 978-0-19-926598-5. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
- S2CID 145187393.
- ^ "Red Roses from Roter Morgen". Time. 15 August 1977. Archived from the original on December 15, 2008. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
- ^ "Über Jürgen Ponto" [About Jürgen Ponto] (in German). Commerzbank. 2017-07-24. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
- ^ "BNP denies Dresdner tie: France's biggest bank says it's not holding merger talks with Germany's number three". CNN. September 9, 1999. Retrieved August 9, 2023.
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
- ^ Dresdner Bank Facts and Figures
- ^ "Deutsche Bank to Acquire Dresdner Bank's Global Agency Securities Lending Business". www.businesswire.com. 2009-05-13. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
- ^ Politike.ru | Лазарь Матвеев | http://politike.ru/termin/matveev-lazar-lazarevich.html
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4767-9519-5.
- ^ a b c d "Report Links Putin to Dresdner". The St. Petersburg Times. March 1, 2005. Archived from the original on June 13, 2008. Retrieved June 15, 2012.
- ^ Nölting, Andreas; Stuhr, Arne (February 23, 2005). "Der Präsident, die Stasi und der Banker" [The president, the Stasi and the banker]. Manager Magazin (in German). Archived from the original on February 12, 2021. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
- ^ Chazan, Guy; Crawford, David (February 23, 2005). "In From the Cold: A Friendship Forged in Spying Pays Dividends in Russia Today: Top Dresdner Banker's Ties to Putin Go Back to Days When They Were Agents". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
Archive is in Russian
- ^ "Inopressa: Дружба, скрепленная шпионажем, сегодня приносит дивиденды в России". February 23, 2005. Archived from the original on 23 February 2005.
- ^ "Маттиас Варниг - старый друг Путина // The Wall Street Journal: Глава российского отделения Dresdner Bank, занимавшегося оценкой Юганскнефтегаза - агент Штази, завербованный Путиным в Дрездене". www.compromat.ru.
- ^ ISBN 978-0521887472.
- ^ Franchetti, Mark (March 19, 2000). "Young Putin's Spy Disaster". The Sunday Times. Retrieved January 13, 2018.[permanent dead link]
- ISBN 978-3854850595.
- ISBN 978-5815901810.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Washington Post. December 22, 2000. Archived from the originalon October 1, 2022. Retrieved August 9, 2023.
- ^ Nord Stream, Matthias Warnig (codename "Arthur") and the Gazprom Lobby Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 114
- ^ a b Sheahan, Maria; Sims, Tom; Seidenstuecker, Hans (November 14, 2017). "German prosecutors raid Commerzbank in tax evasion probe". Reuters. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
External links
- Media related to Dresdner Bank at Wikimedia Commons
- Official website
- History - Timeline
- Allianz Group corporate website
- Dresdner Kleinwort
- Dresdner-Cetelem
- Yahoo! - Dresdner Bank AG Company Profile
- Documents and clippings about Dresdner Bank in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW