Anglo-Oesterreichische Bank

Sale of the Austrian operations and restructuring into Anglo-International Bank

The Anglo-Austrian Bank management announced that it would "reduce its involvement throughout Central Europe and place it on a new, less risky basis." The first step was the sale of all the bank’s branches and investments in Italy to Banca Italo-Britannica in January 1926, in exchange for shares of the acquirer. At the same time, Zoltan Hajdu, the bank’s newly appointed general director for Austria, started tightening the bank’s lending and downsizing the 2,000-strong administrative structure in Austria. Negotiations began with Wiener Bankverein, then shifted to Creditanstalt which bought most of the Vienna branches and other assets on 12 June 1926, while some of the bank's investments went to a Dutch holding company.

The Anglo-Austrian Bank then merged with the British Trade Corporation (est. 1917) to form the Anglo-International Bank on 1926. It began trading on 1 October 1926. The initial capital was £2.36 million. The main shareholders were the Bank of England and Glyn, Mills & Co. The new institution was no longer a universal bank, but rather lent to other banks abroad. Neither the sale of the Austrian business nor the merger involved any consultation of the Austrian ordinary shareholders, who learned about the transactions from the newspapers. Only in January 1927 was an extraordinary general assembly convened, which completed the elimination of the retail shareholders from representation on the bank’s board of directors. The previous shareholders only received one share in Anglo-International Bank for four shares in Anglo-Austrian Bank; there was no vote on the conversion. According to applicable English regulations, the Austrian shareholders did not even have the right to appear at the general meeting in London.

The 1926 sale has often been referred to in Austria as the collapse of the Anglo-Österreichische Bank and the first step in banking sector consolidation in Austria. Formally, however, the Anglo-Österreichische Bank had already been replaced by a foreign institution in 1921. The reference Viennese business newspaper Die Börse stated in retrospect about the end of the Anglobank in Austria (excerpts): "The bank played an extremely important role in the history of Austria's reconstruction. It did so by building a bridge between London and Vienna, by attracting British financial circles to Austria at a time when the horizon was still completely overcast, and by persuading Austria that powerful forces were at work to help it. But this beneficial result ceased when the Austrian stabilization plan was implemented and the connection with the Bank of England began to bear fruit."

After the Creditanstalt took over the Anglobank branches in Vienna, the Austrian economy became even more dependent on the Bank of England, because the Anglo-International Bank, which was now under the total control of the Bank of England, subsequently acted as one of the largest shareholders in Creditanstalt, by then the largest Austrian bank. In addition to the large ownership stake in Creditanstalt, the Anglo-International Bank acquired all of Creditanstalt's previous overseas business in the UK. Zoltan Hajdu became a member of the supervisory board (German: Verwaltungsrat) and later of the executive board (German: Vorstand) of the Creditanstalt. Letzten Endes war die Bank of England über die Anglo-International Bank nicht nur Aktionär, sondern auch Gläubiger der Creditanstalt.

The Anglo-International Bank went on to sell its other assets. By 1927, it sold much of its holdings in the Anglo-Czechoslovak Bank. The Budapest branch continued to exist for some time and was taken over in the early 1930s by the British and Hungarian Bank (Hungarian: Angol-Magyar Bank, est. 1890 as Magyar Kerskedelmi Rt. and renamed in 1920), for which the Anglo-International Bank received shares in the British and Hungarian Bank. The Anglo-Austrian Bank had earlier sold its branch in Zagreb to the Croatian Discount Bank, and also sold its branch in Belgrade to the Bosnian Agrarian and Commercial Bank, again against blocks of shares and seats on supervisory boards. After the merger of these institutes to form the Yugoslav United Bank, the Anglo-International Bank held a stake in one of Yugoslavia’s largest banks. A similar pattern applied in Romania.

Ostensibly, the Bank of England was pursuing political rather than economic goals with the Anglo-International Bank, which did not pay any dividends during its existence, but used its gains to offset write-offs. France and the UK viewed with extreme suspicion the growing tendencies towards an economic union with Germany that had existed in Austria since the end of the First World War. To counteract them, the UK provided the Austrian economy and the government with more support loans than any other country. At the same time, the Bank of England tried to expand its influence in Germany, for which the Anglo-International Bank would also serve as an instrument. As a result, at the request of the Bank of England, Anglo-International Bank undertook a number of commitments, including the issue of a German government bond. However, the company was unable to gain a foothold in Germany in the long term. The German financial economy had initially recovered to such an extent that in June 1928 the Deutsche Bank wanted to buy the Bank of England's stake in the Anglo-International Bank. The Bank of England, of course, turned down the offer.

The Anglo-International Bank’s own board of directors consisted almost exclusively of representatives of the Bank of England and political officials. These included its chairman Herbert Lawrence, managing director Pyotr Bark, and supervisory board members including Otto Niemeyer, Gordon Nairne, Alexander Henderson, Henry Strakosch, Harry Viscount, and William Barclay Peat, several of whom were also members of the House of Commons or House of Lords. Zoltan Hajdu, who was the only continental European representative on the board of directors of Anglo-International Bank, did not act independently from Montagu Norman and effectively represented the interests of the Bank of England. He became a member of the board of directors of the Allgemeine Bodencreditanstalt (from 1922), the Creditanstalt (from 1926), and the Amstelbank, and a member of the supervisory boards of large banks and industrial companies in Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary. In addition, as a large landowner, Hajdu had an estate and numerous properties in western Hungary.

Short-lived brand revival in 2019

Meinl Bank

In June 2019, in the context of the difficulties of Austria's Meinl Bank and resignation of its chairman Julius Meinl V, that bank was renamed Anglo Austrian AAB Bank.

At the request of the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA), the European Central Bank (ECB) withdrew the banking licence of the bank on 15 November 2019. Using this as a pretext, the FMA had liquidators for the bank appointed who on 2 March 2020 filed an application for insolvency which was granted one day later. Appeals against all three decisions in this regard – the withdrawal of the banking licence by the ECB, the appointment of liquidators, and the opening of insolvency proceedings – were filed in the respective courts. While the appeals with respect to the licence withdrawal and the appointment of the liquidators were still pending, the Austrian Supreme Court (OGH) ruled on 13 July 2020 that the opening of insolvency proceedings against the bank had been unlawful. The FMA immediately filed a new application for insolvency which was again found unlawful by the Vienna Appeals Court in August 2020.

A major argument for the withdrawal of the banking licence was the FMA's allegation that the bank was involved in money laundering transactions. Prior to and parallel to the licence withdrawal process, the FMA had filed several criminal complaints against the bank and its (former) managers with the Vienna prosecutors. However, the Vienna prosecutors – after years of investigations, involving judicial assistance from around the world and investigators travelling to foreign jurisdictions – dismissed all such allegations on 26 May 2020 and closed the respective proceedings in connection with money laundering against the bank and its (former) managers, as none of the alleged criminal involvement brought forward by the FMA could withstand scrutiny.

In June 2022, the European Union's General Court confirmed the European Central Bank's revocation of the bank's banking licence. In September 2024, the European Court of Justice rejected an appeal and the verdict became final.