Andreas Treichl of Erste Bank thinks banks should be kept small and simple

HE MAY be descended from five generations of bankers and head a large bank himself, but Andreas Treichl has a pretty low opinion of his profession. He had hoped to become a conductor, but changed his mind on the advice of Leonard Bernstein. The maestro saw him perform, Mr Treichl says, and “told me to go into banking because one would do better as a mediocre banker than one would as a mediocre conductor.”

Happily, most observers consider his tenure at Erste Bank, Austria’s second biggest, which he has run for more than a decade, better than mediocre. He has transformed the staid, insular, 200-year-old savings bank into one of the largest retail banks in central and eastern Europe. Although he led it into a region that subsequently found itself on the front-line of the financial crisis, he has managed to keep it profitable and independent. To be sure, Erste Bank has not escaped the crisis unscathed. Earlier this year it had to raise €1.8 billion ($2.3 billion), including €1.2 billion from the Austrian government, to bolster its capital, and provisions for bad loans have more than doubled in the first half of this year compared with a year earlier. Yet these setbacks look inconsequential when set against the monstrous losses reported by bigger banks farther afield. …