A shotgun wedding: Creating a leading Czech bank
In June 2000, IPB — the third largest bank in the Czech Republic — was bought out by CSOB, a competitor. Integrating IPB, which was riddled with bad loans and questionable deals, was challenging. The priority of CSOB’s top executives was to stabilize the bank, stop the run on deposits and dispose of questionable assets. At the same time they had to focus on post-merger integration, which had to occur at several levels: consolidating assets, product lines, business procedures and technologies; building a new organizational architecture; integrating personnel; and creating an organizational culture that would position the bank to accomplish its strategic goal of becoming the industry leader. The case describes the ways in which the leadership team tackled these to successfully navigate through the challenges it faced through this time.
June 2000
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