The Bayerische Vereinsbank was the result of a private initiative by Munich- and Augsburg-based court bankers, members of the nobility as well as common merchants in 1869, for which King Ludwig II granted a concession to set up a public company limited by shares. Two years later, it received permission for land-financing transactions. Bayerische Vereinsbank was then allowed to carry out mortgage banking business operations in addition to other banking business. By 1930, it was Germany's tenth-largest joint-stock bank with 201 million Reichsmarks in total deposits, behind Deutsche Bank & Disconto-Gesellschaft (4.8 billion), Danat-Bank (2.4 billion), Dresdner Bank (2.3 billion), and Commerz- und Privatbank (1.5 billion), Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft (619 million), Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft (412 million), Шаблон:Ill (366 million), Шаблон:Ill (364 million), and its local peer the Hypo-Bank (272 million).[2]Шаблон:Rp
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bayerische Vereinsbank started to expand throughout Germany and abroad. In 1971 it acquired the Bavarian State Bank, in 1978 Шаблон:Ill in Saarbrücken, and in 1991, Шаблон:Ill (also known as Simonbank) in Düsseldorf. By 1997, it had become the fifth-largest bank in Germany after Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, WestLB, and Commerzbank.[1] The next year, partly as a defensive move against a possible takeover by Deutsche Bank, it merged with its longstanding rival Hypo-Bank, despite the latter's troubled investments in commercial property.[3]
