History
History of Vienna Insurance Group dates back to 1824, with the founding of the k.u.k. priv. wechselseitige Brandschaden Versicherung.
In the end of the 1980s, the company started expanding in central and eastern Europe, founding Kooperativa in Czechoslovakia.
In 1994, the company was transformed into a corporation, and 11% of the stock was introduced on the Vienna Stock Exchange, in the form of preffered shares. Those were changed into common shares in 2005, as the company increased its capital by about €900 million to finance acquisitions.
In 2006, the brand Vienna Insurance Group was introduced as a global brand. In central and eastern Europe, subsidiaries often use it next to their original name.
In 2008, a new capital increase permitted the acquisition of the insurance business of Erste Group, which turned VIG to the market leader in central and eastern Europe. Simultaneously, a long-term sales agreement was signed with Erste Group.
During the 2010 shareholder meeting, it was decided to create a 100% subsidiary for the insurance business in Austria, Wiener Städtische Versicherung AG Vienna Insurance Group.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)