On 1 January 1999, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) was formed through the merger of SüdwestLB, Landesgirokasse, and the commercial banking business of L-Bank. On 1 August 2005, Baden Württembergische Bank (BW-Bank) was incorporated into LBBW as a legally dependent institution under public law. Also as a legally dependent institution under public law, the former Landesbank Rheinland-Pfalz was integrated in the LBBW Group on 1 July 2008 under the new name Rheinland-Pfalz Bank. In 2007, the state governor of Baden-Württemberg,
Günther Oettinger, announced that LBBW would pay an initial 250 million euros, or $342 million, for its competitor Sachsen LB; on 1 April 2008, LBBW re-organized its activities in Central Germany (
Thuringia,
Saxony-Anhalt and
Saxony) under the umbrella of Sachsen Bank. By the
2008 financial crisis, LBBW had already grown to become the biggest and strongest of Germany's seven remaining independent public Landesbanken. It nonetheless had to take a state
bailout of 5 billion euros. and reduced its portfolio of
toxic assets to 3 billion euros by 2014 from 95 billion in 2008. Similar to other public lenders, it opted for support from its regional state owner instead of drawing on help from
SoFFin, the federal government's bail-out scheme. By 2009, the
European Commission approved a
restructuring plan which had the institution focus on its core regional banking businesses, curtail capital market and
proprietary trading activities and shrink its balance sheet. In 2019, LBBW became one of six banks to be mandated by the
Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to raise $1.5 billion in five-year
sukuk. == Assets ==