Top performance among European bank shares

Since the successful launch of Bank Austria Creditanstalt shares on the stock market in July 2003, the share price has performed very strongly and substantially increased shareholders’ assets. With a gain of 67% (total return) since the beginning of 2004, the BA-CA share has been among the top-performing European bank shares, clearly outperforming the European EuroStoxx/Banks index, which advanced by 11% in the same period. Even the Austrian ATX stock market index, which gained 57% and thus developed more favourably than major international stock markets for the fourth consecutive time, lagged behind the performance of BA-CA shares.

The strong increase in the BA-CA share price reflects the fact that we consistently implemented our growth strategy and made steady progress toward reaching our profitability targets for 2006. In the 2004 financial year, our results improved from quarter to quarter, in some cases clearly exceeding the expectations of analysts and investors. The capital market recognised this performance.