BANK OF NIŠ BETWEEN TWO WORLD WARS

Abstract

With the outbreak of the First World War, the economic development of the Kingdom of Serbia was completely interrupted. The great suffering in the war could not be quickly compensated, and most of the pre-war financial institutions that managed to renew their work after the war were not able to financially meet the huge needs of the state and the population. That is why in the post-war years, a large number of money institutions on a shareholder basis sprang up. At the end of 1922, the Nis Commercial and Industrial Bank was founded in Nis with a share capital of 3 million dinars, which placed this institution in the rank of medium-strong banks for the province. For its work, this bank bought the building from the branch of the Belgrade General Bank and took over its operations. The Popović and Jovanović families, which were the
majority owners of this institution, owned the most shares. Although the Nis Commercial and Industrial Bank envisaged a wide range of operations with its rules, it very quickly turned its attention to purely banking operations, ie work with short-term discount loans. As two banks in Nis with a similar name went bankrupt in 1925, the management decided to change the name of the institution to Bank of Niš, which was approved the following year. The name was not chosen by chance and was identical to the name of the institution that most of the shareholders of the Nis Commercial and Industrial Bank founded in 1903, and which ceased to operate after the war. Simultaneously with the change of name, an economic crisis arose in the territory of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, so that many clients of this bank were not able to service their loans regularly. The amount of savings deposits was reduced, the bank stopped operating positively and at the end of 1928 it went bankrupt. Its management was blamed for the bad business of Bank of Niš, and its bankruptcy received its epilogue in court.