Živnostenská banka, a.s. (full name until 1910 Živnostenská banka pro Čechy a Moravu v Praze,, in short ŽB or ZIBA) was a major commercial bank operating in the Habsburg monarchy, then Czechoslovakia until absorption into the State Bank of Czechoslovakia in 1950. It restarted activity in the late 1950s, was privatized in 1992, and after 1993 was one of the largest banks in the Czech Republic. In 2002 it was purchased by UniCredit, and in 2006 was renamed UniCredit Bank Czech Republic.
Austro-Hungarian era
Živnostenská banka was established in 1868 as a joint-stock company, acting as a middleman between the Austro-Hungarian Bank and smaller savings banks.[1] It was the first bank in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be financed entirely by Czech capital, and aimed at supporting the development of newly established Czech businesses. In 1896, it opened a first branch in Vienna, and in 1908 another one in Trieste.[2] In 1900, it sponsored the creation of the Ljubljana Credit Bank in which it held half of the initial equity capital. In 1909, ZIBA was one of the founding investors of the Croatian Landesbank in