Within UniCredit Group
In 2005, an increasingly distressed HVB was taken over by Unicredit. Also in 2005, HVB absorbed Vereins- und Westbank, which had been formed by the 1974 merger of Vereinsbank Hamburg (unrelated to Bayerische Vereinsbank) and Westbank. Vereinsbank Hamburg had been founded in 1856 on the initiative of renowned merchants in Hamburg. Westbank was created in 1943 from a forced merger of several smaller banks in northern Germany. It was initially called "Schleswig-Holsteinische und Westbank", and was renamed "Westbank" in 1968.
In 2006, HVB took over the corporate clients portfolio of Westfalenbank AG, which had been founded in 1921 by leading companies in the Rhineland-Westphalian industrial district on Bochum. There was already a connection between the two institutions since Hypo-Bank had acquired a part of Westfalenbank in 1971.
Also in 2006, HVB sold its overwhelming majority holding in BA-CA to UniCredit for €13 billion, without an auction process. This subsequently led to a number of lawsuits by HVB shareholders. The investment company Activest was sold to a UniCredit fund subsidiary called Pioneer Investments.
In January 2007, UniCredit announced its intention to carry out a squeeze-out of HVB. The price in this respect was established at €38.26 per share. A decision on the squeeze-out was taken at the Shareholders Meeting on 26 June 2007. Following the Shareholders Meeting, over 100 actions to set aside a shareholders' resolution by free HVB shareholders took place; this represents a record for Germany. At the Shareholders Meeting, the Bonn-based lawyer Thomas Heidel was selected as special representative pursuant to § 147 German Stock Corporation Act, who, amongst other things, was to look into possible claims for damages in conjunction with the sale of the Bank Austria shareholding. UniCredit, for its part, lodged an action to set aside a shareholders' resolution in turn.[2] During the subsequent period, the special representative lodged complaints that his work was being obstructed.[3] On 15 September 2008, the squeeze-out adopted by the Shareholders Meeting in June 2007 was entered into the commercial register at the Register of Companies in Munich. As such, all remaining HVB shares were transferred to UniCredit by force of law, and the listing on the stock exchanges was discontinued.[4]
In April 2008, HVB aligned its brand with that of UniCredit Group. The name HypoVereinsbank was retained; however, the previous blue logo was replaced by black lettering preceded by the red UniCredit logo.[5] In a second step, the German parent entity Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank Aktiengesellschaft was renamed UniCredit Bank AG on 15 December 2008 (amongst other reasons, due to a perceived risk of confusion with the troubled Hypo Real Estate), without that affecting the HVB branding strategy.[6]
In August 2014, the company announced the sale of the DAB direct banking subsidiary.[7] BNP Paribas paid €354 million for the 81.4% share in DAB held by HVB.
HypoVereinsbank sold its interest in PlanetHome AG in June 2015. The transfer of the equities was completed on 16 June 2015. Financial investors AP Capital Investments and Deutsche Invest Equity Partners purchased PlanetHome AG and its subsidiaries. Cooperation with PlanetHome shall remain unaffected by the sale of the equities. Since 2016, former subsidiary UniCredit Bank Serbia (formerly HVB Banka Srbija), UniCredit Bank Slovenia (formerly Bank Austria Creditanstalt d.d. Ljubljana), UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia (formerly HVB Bank Czech Republic) were directly under UniCredit S.p.A., the parent company of HypoVereinsbank.
