Anglo-Austrian Bank
The Anglo-Österreichische Bank, in shorthand Anglobank, was a bank founded in Vienna in 1863 with an extensive branch network in the Habsburg Monarchy and later in its successor states, primarily Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Following the collapse of the monarchy, the Anglobank came under the control of the Bank of England, and in 1921, its head office was moved to London where it was restructured as the Anglo-Austrian Bank. In 1926, it was renamed Anglo-International Bank to reflect the sale that year of most of its Austrian activities to Creditanstalt. As a consequence, the Anglo-International Bank became one of the Creditanstalt's main shareholders, and played a role in the internationally consequential collapse of Creditanstalt in 1931. After 1933, Anglo-International Bank stopped making new commitments. It remained formally in business until 1951, and was eventually liquidated in 1962.
In Czechoslovakia, the former Anglobank branches were restructured in 1922 into a significant domestic bank, the Anglo-Czechoslovak Bank headquartered in Prague, which remained in activity until being absorbed by Živnostenská Banka in 1948.
From its creation until leaving Austria in 1921, the Anglobank headquarters remained located in the Palais Montenuovo at Strauchgasse 1–3, opposite the Old Vienna Stock Exchange. In 1864. The Anglobank had initially rented parts of the palace. It bought the property and remodeled it in 1871, whereby the courtyard was covered with glass and from then on served as a cash room. The building was repurposed after World War II as head office of Oesterreichische Kontrollbank.
Habsburg era
Anglo-Österreichische Bank, or Anglobank for short, was founded on in Vienna with British and Austrian capital, one of the first two “foreign banks” as opposed to the prior practice of creating domestic banks. The London bank Glyn, Mills, Leurie & Co. was significantly involved in the venture. Similarly as with the BIO, the board of directors consisted of two committees of eight members each, one in Vienna and the other in London. The Anglobank’s initial capital was 20 million silver guilders in 100,000 shares. According to the articles of association, each member of the board of directors had to personally deposit at least 100 shares and received a fixed remuneration of 3000 silver guilders per year.Its London office was initially established at St Mildred's Court, Poultry, and moved in the 1870s to 31, Lombard Street where it remained until World War I.
The Anglobank soon had considerable success, with a focus on railways expansion and corporate finance especially in mining, iron and steel. From 1864 to the end of 1868, total assets nearly quadrupled. The Anglobank opened its first branch in Lemberg in the 1860s. A Hungarian affiliate founded in Pest in 1867, the Anglo-Hungarian Bank, did not survive the Austro-Hungarian financial crash of 1873, but the Anglobank opened a branch in Pest and another in Prague in 1880. In 1869, the Anglobank co-founded the Austro-Ägyptische Bank in Cairo, together with the Creditanstalt. It also had four subsidiaries in Vienna, including M. L. Biedermann & Co. Bank-AG, Österreichische Kontrollbank für Industrie und Handel, and Wiener Creditbank. In 1869, the Allgemeine österreichische Baugesellschaft, a property company, was founded with the significant participation of Anglobank.
Anglobank thus became the largest competitor to the Creditanstalt, until then Austria’s dominant bank. In addition to London and Vienna, it was present in all crown lands with an extensive branch network. In Vienna alone, the company had 17 branches in 13 districts. Anglobank held a large stake in Banca Commerciale Italiana, one of Italy's largest banks. In Germany, it was a significant participant in the creation of Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich, in Hamburg, Austrian-German Bank in Frankfurt, in Dresden, in Frankfurt, Deutsche Nationalbank in Bremen Centralbank für Industrie und Handel in Berlin, and Disconto-Gesellschaft in Leipzig.
Among the leading figures of Anglobank in the 1860s and 1870s were, Julius von Kunzek, Carl von Mayer, Leon Sapieha, as well as Rudolf and. After the Vienna stock market crash of 1873, which temporarily threw the company back from 2nd to 5th place among Vienna's major banks, non-aristocratic shareholders increasingly gained influence, e.g. Wilhelm Franz Exner, the brothers Adolf and Julius Landesberger, and the industrial families Petschek and Schicht. Among many high-profile customers, composer Johann Strauss II held an account at the Anglobank.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Anglobank held a leading position in the financing of the Austro-Hungarian lignite mining and in the issuance of government bonds. Its lobbying operations included participation in daily newspaper Die Presse and in the founding and financing of the magazine Der Österreichische Volkswirt. In 1913, the company had twice as many branches as the considerably larger Creditanstalt, and only slightly fewer than the Wiener Bankverein, Austria-Hungary’s leading bank by this metric.
Interwar period
The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy had a major impact on Anglobank's business. More than 50% of its assets were in what became Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. As for shareholding of the bank’s capital, 33 percent was held in Austria, 45 percent in Czechoslovakia, 11 percent in Yugoslavia, and 11 percent in Hungary and Romania. Even after a number of branch closures during the war and its immediate aftermath, by 1921 Anglobank still had 22 branches in Vienna, 24 in the rest of Austria, 29 in Czechoslovakia, 3 in Hungary, 3 in Romania, 1 in Yugoslavia, and 1 in Italy. Amid the turmoil, the Bank of England became a major shareholder of Anglobank, through the mediation of the Petschek family and under direct watch of Governor Montagu Norman. During World War I, the British authorities had already confiscated the Anglobank's business in London, which was subsequently relocated in the commercial building at 24, Lombard Street, not far from its previous location at No. 31.On, the Czechoslovak government passed a "nostrification" law, which forced owners and shareholders of companies in the territory of Czechoslovakia to accept Czechoslovak citizenship and move the headquarters of their companies to Czechoslovakia. All foreign banks had to either sell their branches to existing Czechoslovak credit institutions or convert them into new Czechoslovak entities, within a tight time frame. Norman did not accept this deadline, however, and used his leverage to negotiate an exemption from the Czechoslovak authorities. The Anglo-Czechoslovak Bank began operations in Czechoslovakia on, under full ownership of the Anglo-Austrian Bank until 1927.
The balance sheet of Anglobank showed assets of 4,219,992,786 crowns as at 31 December 1919. With retroactive effect, the General Assembly on 25 April 1920 decided on a profit distribution of 10.83% for 1917, 6.25% for 1918 and 10% for 1919. At the same time, the shareholders approved a capital increase from 150,000,000 crowns to 200,000,216 crowns. Simultaneously, Anglobank created a subsidiary in Vaduz, the Bank in Liechtenstein AG, which began operations on. A main reason for the establishment of BiL was the goal of Austrian companies and banks to merge their subsidiaries, which were isolated in the formed successor states, into holding companies and to have them managed from a neutral country. As a result, the BiL became a pioneer of the holding business in Liechtenstein.
Relocation to London and aftermath
The Anglobank moved its headquarters from Vienna to London on. On, a separate entity named Anglo-Austrian Bank was founded in London, which took over all assets and liabilities of Anglobank with all its syndicated holdings. The former share capital of 200 million kroner was converted to 650,000 pounds sterling. The conversion balance showed a significant reserve of 125 billion crowns. The new board of directors consisted of ten representatives of the Bank of England and six representatives of the previous shareholders. The Bank of England had achieved this position through an exchange of debts against preferred shares and certificates of indebtedness at the debt’s par value. About two-thirds of the ordinary shares of Anglobank remained in the possession of pre-war owners in Austria and the other successor countries, mostly small shareholders.As a consequence, and unlike surviving domestic Austrian banks, the Anglo-Austrian Bank had ample ability to lend and became a conduit for the allocation of British capital to the Austrian economy. The Bank of England lobbied actively albeit unsuccessfully against the establishment of a new Austrian central bank, which was planned for the summer of 1922. On its behalf, the English board of directors of the Anglo-Austrian Bank wrote a letter to UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George, pointing out the "urgent need" to support the Austrian government through external "aid measures which alone could prevent serious crises". They argued that a new central bank would not achieve lasting success but only undermine private institutions whose continued strength was critical to Austrian recovery. Nevertheless, The Austrian National Council passed a federal law of to established the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, which started operations on. Nevertheless, the Bank of England was able to retain influence and impose its deflationary preferences. Officials from the Bank of England, Robert Charles Kay and later Anton van Gyn, sat on the OeNB's supervisory board as official observers and financial controllers.
Significant investments of the Anglo-Austrian Bank directly in Austria included Austro-Daimler, Austro-Fiat, Puch works, Brevillier & Urban, Schoeller-Bleckmann Steel Works, Enzesfeld metal works, Universal Bau AG, Powder factory Skodawerke-Wetzler AG, ELIN AG, DELKA shoe industry and trade AG, Herlango AG, Josef Manner & Comp. Inc., and Bed feather and sheet factory Adolf Gans AG. The bank also kept operations and investments in the broader Central and Southeastern Europe, which became de facto controlled by the Bank of England. In 1924, Anglo-Austrian Bank had 18 branches in Vienna, 13 in the rest of Austria, two in Hungary, two in Romania, one in Yugoslavia, and three in Italy.
Even so, the breakdown of trade relations between the successor states and the increased appeal of economic autarky meant that the flows of British capital deployed in the region through the Anglo-Austrian Bank remained limited. The advocacy of freer intra-regional trade by the Bank of England and Anglo-Austrian Bank was generally unsuccessful. By 1925, Southeast European economy were plagued by recession and inflation. Only the operations in Czechoslovakia were profitable, making the Anglo-Czechoslovakian Bank the most important asset of the Anglo-Austrian Bank at the time. In January 1925, the London controllers determined that the balance sheet of the Anglo-Austrian Bank's branch in Vienna would be in deficit for 1924. This gave concrete form to the Bank of England's considerations of giving up the bank’s Austrian base.