The story
ČSOB was established in 1964 in the former Czechoslovakia as the sole bank providing foreign trade, financing and convertible currency operations. After 1989, ČSOB expanded its activity to include services for entrepreneurs and for individuals.
A major milestone in ČSOB's history was its privatisation in June 1999, when the Belgian KBC Bank (a member of the KBC Group NV) bought a 66% majority stake from the Czech government for 40 billion CZK. Later, in 1999, KBC bought a further 16.63% stake from the National Bank of Slovakia. At the same time the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development purchased 7.47% from the NBS.
Prior to acquiring its bankrupt competitor Investiční a poštovní banka in June 2000, ČSOB was the fourth-largest bank in the Czech Republic. The acquisition of Investiční a poštovní banka, at the time the third-largest Czech bank, brought an additional 3.3 million customers and a network of 179 branches.
Since 1 July 2008 ČSOB Slovakia has begun to merge with Istrobanka following the latter's acquisition by KBC.
In November 2009, KBC announced a plan to float 40% of ČSOB on the Prague Stock Exchange the following year.
In 2010 ČSOB established the Era brand wanting to attract younger customer, but was not able to do so and in 2015 started to advertise the brand together with its subsidiary Poštovní spořitelna.
In 2014 the CEO of ČSOB, Pavel Kavánek, who held the position for 20 years, was replaced by John Hollows. Kavánek went on to direct the supervisory board of ČSOB until Zdeněk Tůma took over the position in 2019. Hollows retired in 2022 after being with the KBC group for 25 years and was followed by Aleš Blažek, the former CEO of KBC Bank Ireland.
ČSOB bought the largest online travel insurance seller in the Czech Republic, Top-Pojištění, in 2016. At the time Top-Pojištění had 270,000 clients and stayed an independent insurance broker offering insurances from 13 different companies.
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In 2019 ČSOB bought the remaining 45% of Českomoravská stavební spořitelna (ČMSS) from Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall (BSH) for 6.15 billion crowns. ČMSS had 1.3 million customers and was the largest provider of construction savings in the Czech Republic when it was taken over.
Because ČSOB refused to replace damaged banknotes in 2018 and 2019, the Czech National Bank (ČNB) fined the bank 1.5 million crowns in 2020.
In December 2020 ČSOB was sued by the TEP Praha company for withholding 1.3 billion CZK, which, according to TEP Praha, were meant to be invested into a railway hub near Košice in Slovakia. ČSOB withheld the funds due to their unclear origins as the listed address of the headquarters of TEP Praha were leading to a run-down building that was auctioned off earlier in 2020 and because the company was not active in the years before the lawsuit. The funds were later suspected to come from Russia in a money laundering scheme, since the Russian honorary consul of Slovakia had asked the Belgian honorary consul of Slovakia to investigate the withholding of the money.
In 2022, the subsidiary Poštovní spořitelna was renamed ČSOB Poštovní spořitelna and ČSOB allowed the customers to use their branch network as well as their services. In the same year, ČSOB acquired the remaining stake in the joint-venture Mallpay from Mall Group.
In 2023 ČSOB was ordered to pay 3.7 billion CZK in an abitral to the Icec-Holding, which the company had initiated in 2016. Icec-Holding had sued the Investiční a poštovní banku (IPB), whose legal issues ČSOB took over together with the bank later on, in 1999 claiming the IPB broke contractual obligations by taking over a Slovenian paper mill Icec held shares in.
In 2024, ČSOB bought a 30% stake in the startup Ownest, jointly controlling it with the European Housing Services estate group. In January 2026, ČSOB’s parent company KBC acquired a majority stake in 365.bank and plans to integrate it into ČSOB.
From Wikipedia’s article on Československá obchodní banka, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3