The financial cornershop
Erste becomes a profitable product factory
Measured by total assets of some €120 billion, Austria's Erste Bank der österreichischen Sparkassen (Erste Bank) is about a third of the size of WestLB, although by total clients – about 2 million – it would be a minnow by the standards of virtually all of Germany's Landesbanken.
Nevertheless, the strategy that Erste Bank has developed since its flotation in 1997 is one that is reportedly being studied very closely by a number of German Landesbanken. According to an Erste spokesman, several German banks have already approached the Austrian bank to find out more about the potential for its business model to act as a blueprint for the development of the...
