VR Bank München Land and Raiffeisenbank Isar-Loisachtal are aiming for a merger. As they announced in a joint press release, the supervisory boards of the two cooperative banks based in Oberhaching and Wolfratshausen have already approved a merger. The representative assemblies should vote on this in the first half of 2022. The two institutes would then create a bank with total assets of around three billion euros and more than 80,000 customers. As Andreas Müller, board member of the much larger VR Bank München Land, said of the SZ, the merger should neither cut jobs nor close locations.
Müller names two reasons for a merger in the coming year. There is increasing regulation that has increased since the financial crisis and can be better managed together. In addition, larger houses would have a competitive advantage in times of low interest rates. “We already have overlaps in the south of Munich,” says Müller, referring to Geretsried and Wolfratshausen, where both houses currently have branches. These would of course be merged, but the staff would remain, promises Müller. “On the contrary, we are looking for qualified employees,” said the board of directors.
According to Müller, the branch network should also be retained as it is currently set up. The Oberhachinger division currently has 20 branches, including locations in the northeast such as Poing and Pliening, in the city of Munich such as Trudering and Münsing on Lake Starnberg. The new partner Isar-Loisachtal would then add seven branches, including the Wolfratshausen and Geretsried locations. The number of employees would then be 429, 327 are currently employed at Munich Land, 102 at Isar-Loisachtal. Müller sees this as an opportunity to be able to offer the advice even more precisely to the customer. “This means we have a large number of specialists,” he says.
It is not the first merger that Raiffeisenbank has completed in the region. The houses from Oberhaching and Sauerlach merged as early as 1995, and VB Wolfratshausen was added five years later. In 2004 the merger with the Raiffeisenbank Feldkirchen took place. Raiffeisenbank Isar-Loisachtal, to which the Baierbrunn, Hohenschäftlarn and Straßlach locations belong, has already had three mergers.