Helaba

The business field “Wholesale customer business” comprises financial services for enterprises, banks and institutional investors. In the business field of “private customers and small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs)”, through its S-Group Bank, Helaba provides services for the S-Group savings banks in Hesse, Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg. the framework of “public development and infrastructure business”, Helaba serves the development support programmes of the regional state of Hesse and participates in the development institutions and agencies in Hesse and Thuringia. Also GWH, one of Hesse’s biggest housing corporations, belongs to Helaba.

Main Tower in Frankfurt

On June 1, 1953, Hessische Landesbank Girozentrale arose from the merger of Hessische Landesbank Darmstadt Girozentrale (founded in 1940), Nassauische Landesbank Wiesbaden (founded in 1940) and Landeskreditkasse zu Kassel (founded in 1832). In the 1970s, a financial scandal in relation to Tibor Rosenbaum brought Hessische Landesbank into serious difficulties. On July 1, 1992, a state treaty between Hesse and Thuringia on uniting the savings banks organizations of the two federal states brought about the creation of a joint Landesbank. As a result, it was the first Landesbank to operate outside a single federal state’s boundary. In the year 2005, Helaba acquired Frankfurter Sparkasse and thereby entered further into private customer business, which it had already conducted through its Darmstadt Branch and at its Kassel location through Landeskreditkasse zu Kassel.

In 2007, Jürgen Rüttgers and Roland Koch, the minister-presidents of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, tentatively agreed on approving a merger of their respective state-owned banks, Helaba and WestLB;[1] however, WestLB was eventually broken up in 2012 after years of losses and controversy. During his time in office, CEO Hans-Dieter Brenner later advocated a merger of Helaba with DekaBank, the fund manager for the country's savings banks.[2]

In 2014, Helaba entered a joint venture with U.S. banking group BNY Mellon and the country's 25 largest savings banks to help corporate customers to expand foreign trade with Asia.[3] In late 2018, it acquired Dexia Kommunalbank Deutschland, the German unit of Franco-Belgian bank Dexia, for 352 million euros ($398 million).[4]

In July 2011 it was reported that Helaba would pull out of the EU's bank stress tests to avoid public failure.[5]

The foundation stone of the Main Tower was laid in October 1996. Three years later, the bank moved into the building. With a height of 200 metres, it is the fourth-highest skyscraper in Frankfurt. Earlier, the bank was headquartered in the adjacent building, now called Garden Towers.

In 2023, the European Central Bank fined Helaba with 6.83 million euro ($7.29 million) for "consciously" misrepresenting its exposure to turbulent financial markets during the COVID-19 pandemic so it would need less capital; at the time, this was the second-largest levied by the ECB since taking over supervision of the euro zone's biggest lenders in 2014.[6]

• Helaba official website
• Helaba Invest
• Clippings about Helaba in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW