Austria: Erste, the product factory

Erste Bank handed control of its branch network to local savings banks, and went to work on creating products they could sell.

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.

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