A4 für Copyshop GB.indd - Bayerische Landesbank

62 BayernLB – our company
Support operations activities
Corporate Center
The Corporate Center bundles together all of the central support units of BayernLB. In
this way, it nurtures a central, consistent strategy for the Bank, and manages the areas
under its remit at a global level.
The divisions of the Corporate Center serve internal customers such as the Board of
Management, the business areas, support operations, and subsidiaries of BayernLB,
as well as the Bank’s owners and outside parties such as auditors, authorities, rating
agencies and members of the press / public.
Participations
In the participations business, as in all of BayernLB’s other business activities, the
objective is to generate adequate long-term profitability after risk. BayernLB’s partici-
pations portfolio is subdivided into strategic, financial and other participations (for
more information on significant changes to the participations portfolio during 2004,
see Section 4: Report on the Bank and the Group).
Participations in German and foreign banks comprise a major component of BayernLB’s
strategic participations portfolio. These help the Bank to both broaden customer poten-
tial and expand market share. The Bank also has participations in the real estate and
housing construction sector. Here, BayernLB has a tradition of high-level expertise in
financing, and can offer a broad range of products. Rounding off our range of strategic
participations are various service companies specialising in securities settlement and
computer services. The Bank’s financial holdings consist of investments in other com-
panies. These are acquired with the expectation that the companies will significantly
increase in value over the coming years.
The following are the main participations that are of strategic significance to the
Group. For many years, BayernLB has been active in its enlarged core European market
through these companies. They are managed in part by the Bank (for the retail activi-
ties of these companies, see “Group retail activities”, Section 3).
Deutsche Kreditbank Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin (DKB)
DKB has been wholly owned by BayernLB since 1 February 1995.
As a retail bank operating within the BayernLB Group, DKB focuses on target customer
groups hand-picked from the private, public-sector and corporate customer segments.
Its business activities are centred on the new federal states, where the bank has an
extremely high market share of public-sector customers.