KBC Group
Belgian bank / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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KBC Group is a Belgian universal multi-channel bank-insurer, focusing on private clients and small and medium-sized enterprises in Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. It was created in 1998 through the merger of Kredietbank (KB), the cooperative CERA Bank [nl], ABB Insurance, and Fidelitas Insurance. The acronym KBC refers to KredietBank and CERA.
 | |
 KBC Group head office in Brussels | |
| Company type | Naamloze vennootschap |
|---|---|
| Euronext Brussels: KBC
LuxSE: KBC BEL 20 component | |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | 9 February 1935; 89 years ago (1935-02-09) (Kredietbank), present name (KBC Group) dates from 2005 |
| Headquarters | Havenlaan 2, B-1080, Brussels, Belgium |
Key people | Koenraad Debackere (Chairperson), Johan Thijs [nl] (CEO), Luc Popelier (CFO) |
| Products | Banking, insurance, asset management |
| Revenue | €7.629 billion (2019)[1] |
| €2.489 billion (2019)[1] | |
| AUM | €216 billion (2019)[1] |
| Total assets | €290.7 billion (end 2019)[1] |
| Total equity | €20.4 billion (end 2019)[1] |
Number of employees | 37,854 (FTE, end 2019)[1] |
| Website | www |
KBC Group is one of Belgium's major companies and the second largest bancassurer in the country. As of late 2020, it was the 15th largest bank in Europe by market capitalisation[2] and a major financial player in Central and Eastern Europe, employing some 41,000 staff (of which more than half in Central and Eastern Europe) and serving 12 million customers worldwide[1] (some 7 to 8 million in Central and Eastern Europe). KBC is a Forbes Global 2000 company.[3]
The group is controlled by a group of core shareholders, and has a free float of approximately 60%. The core shareholders include KBC Ancora, a listed company controlled by CERA (or Cera cvba [nl], a holding company formed by the cooperative clients of CERA Bank at the time of the 1998 merger), owning 19%; MRBB (Maatschappij voor Roerend Bezit van de Boerenbond), a vehicle of the Boerenbond farmers' association, at 12%; a group of industrialist families, at 8%; and CERA directly, at 3%.[1] Its shares are traded on the Euronext exchange in Brussels.
KBC has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank.[4][5]