The Austrian deposit insurance safety net has to absorb the approximately 35,000 almost exclusively German private customers of Sberbank Europe based in Vienna. The Austrian Financial Market Authority has prohibited the bank from continuing business operations.
This means that 913 million euros of the approximately one billion euros in customer deposits of Sberbank Europe are secured by Einlagensicherung Austria (ESA) and must be paid out within ten days. This applies to customer credits of up to 100,000 euros per person. On average, there were 26,000 euros in the deposit account per customer.
The millions have to be raised proportionately by the local banks, Bawag, Oberbank and UniCredit Bank Austria are among the ESA members. However, the deposit insurance will probably not have to write off the money yet: Because ESA Managing Director Stefan Tacke hopes to get the majority of the 913 million euros back through Sberbank’s insolvency proceedings. The distribution of the burden should look like this: ESA bears 40 percent, Raiffeisen 36 percent or 273 million euros and the savings banks 24 percent or 219 million euros.
Sberbank Europe AG is a credit institution licensed in Austria and owned by Sberbank of Russia. In Germany, it only appeared with the trademark “Sberbank Direct” via a legally dependent branch. Deposits at Sberbank Direct are therefore deposits at Sberbank Europe in Vienna, which is why the Austrian deposit guarantee – also widely advertised on the German website – applies. Although the compensation scheme for German banks is handling the current compensation procedure, only the Austrian ESA has to pay.
120 business customers
120 Austrian corporate customers are also affected by the predicament of the state-controlled Sberbank. You will also be compensated by ESA.
Sberbank wanted to withdraw from Europe because of Western sanctions. There had been mass withdrawals and thus liquidity problems. The subsidiaries in Croatia and Slovenia were ceded to local banks.
Deposit insurance is not that rare, but Sberbank far exceeds the cases of recent years: the bankruptcy of the Burgenland Commerzialbank in 2020 with 465 million euros, the Autobank with 105 and the Anglo Austrian AAB 2020 with 55 million euros.
Source: Nachrichten
