2024-02-13 03:22:59
For more than 70 years since existence its activity of The international institute of banking research practically no is reflected in the media
In the world of European finance, a secret elite club meets twice a year to shape the continent’s banking landscape. The International Institute for Banking Studies (IIEB), created in 1950 by four innovative European lenders, has maintained a secret aura for more than seven decades, writes the Financial Times. For 73 years IIEB
collects the leaders of the largest banks in Europe
twice a year in luxury hotels and royal palaces across the continent to discuss sensitive topics such as M&A deals and global policymaking.
The group does not have a website and its members, agenda and meeting minutes are not made public. Members are not allowed to share details of the discussions, several sources told the Financial Times on condition of anonymity.
As well as being a forum for the exchange of ideas between Europe’s most connected financiers, the IIEB is an elite social club where, over three days, banker partners enjoy gala dinners, private tours of historic landmarks and high-end shopping excursions.
According to information, at the end of October 2023, a three-day meeting of the secret club was held at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich, which was attended by 40 of the most influential representatives of the European banking industry. The head of the Swiss Ministry of Finance, Karin Keller-Sutter, and the governor of the country’s central bank, Thomas Jordan, were also present at the event. Together with their colleagues, they also discussed the collapse of one of the largest and oldest Swiss banks, Credit Suisse, and its merger with UBS last spring.
“This is not Davos where anyone can buy a membership,” an IIEB member told the Financial Times.
The International Institute for Banking Research was founded in Paris in 1950 by the heads of four lenders from across the continent – Credit Industriel et Commercial, Union Bank of Switzerland, Societe Generale de Belgique and Amsterdamsche Bank. The aim was to hold regular discussions at the highest level on developments in the banking sector, as well as the economy and the monetary system. Membership of the IIEB is reserved for the heads of Europe’s most influential banks.
Critics of the institute are skeptical of its goals, citing the organization’s lack of public disclosure and the exclusivity of its membership. The high-profile nature of the attendees and the luxurious setting of the meetings further fueled speculation about the real idea and influence of the IIEB, summarizes the Financial Times.
The publication reveals that bank-to-bank deals are a common topic on the sidelines of meetings, according to institute members, although most are hypothetical. But one of the largest mergers and acquisitions of financial institutions in Europe was agreed at an IIEB event in 1997. Then the CEO of the Swiss Bank Corporation, Marcel Ospel, and his counterpart at the Union Bank of Switzerland, Mathis Cabialavetta, agreed to the merger of the second and the third largest bank in Switzerland to create UBS.
The deal was worth 29.3 billion dollars
The Financial Times reveals one of the institute’s meetings was held at the five-star Grand Hotel in Stockholm in 2010. Participants were treated to a gala dinner and a trip to the opera while their wives enjoyed a shopping trip. One of the organizers was the chairman of the board of the Swedish bank Handelsbanken Per Boman, who shortly before the start of the meeting decided to leave the club in protest.
“We have been members of the organization for decades when it served to bring European banks together,” he said. Boman criticized the institute for “excessive waste and lack of transparency”.
Among the high-ranking guests at the meetings of the “International Institute for Banking Research” over the years were the British Prince Andrew, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev (in 2013, as Prime Minister, he spoke at the IIEB meeting in St. Petersburg), Turkish leader Recep Erdogan, as well as Italian President Sergio Mattarella.