How it started
History
1974 - Donau Bank AG is jointly founded in Vienna by the USSR State Bank and the Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR.
1987 to 20 November 1990 - Donau Bank AG is headed by Andrey Akimov. From 1989 to 1991, Alexander Ivanovich Medvedev (Russian: Александр Иванович Медведев) was a director at Donau Bank and was the managing director of the Donau Bank's subsidiary "Inter Trade Consult GmbH" (Austria). It allegedly serviced very large debts of Bulgaria and, which the Austrian Die Presse wrote at the time, was "adherence to an overly expansive business strategy." In the spring of 1990, Bulgaria declared a moratorium on servicing its external debt.
1990 - SOVLINK-American Corporation (Russian: ИК «Совлинк»), which specialized in the oil industry, closely cooperated with TNK and was owned by CB Alba Alliance LLC (Russian: ООО КБ «Альба Альянс»), was established in New York by the American consulting firm Salomon Brothers, Sedgwick, Phibra Energy, plus the Soviet foreign Donau Bank and the state-owned Russian foreign economic association SovFinTrade (Russian: российским внешнеэкономическим объединением «СовФинТрейд»).
1992 - The Central Bank of the Russian Federation acquires 99.97% of the bank, the remaining 0.03% is retained by the Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR (Vneshtorgbank).
1997 - VTB acquires a 51% majority share in Donau Bank AG.
From Wikipedia’s article on Donau Bank, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2