Land Mortgage Bank

Land Mortgage Bank (Земельний банк гіпотетичний; Zemelnyi bank hipotechnyi). A joint-stock bank established in Lviv in 1910 to provide peasants with loans for land purchases and farm improvement. It was the first Ukrainian bank in Galicia. It was set up with an equity fund of one million kronen, which was raised by selling 2,500 shares at 400 kronen each. By 1914 it had issued 1,850 long-term mortgage loans to peasants for a total sum of 7,356,000 kronen. The general devaluation after the First World War reduced the bank’s equity sharply, but by the 1930s it had risen to 5 million zlotys, and assets amounted to 800,000 zlotys. A branch was set up in Stanyslaviv. The bank’s directors were Oleksander (Les) Kulchytsky (1910–30) and Volodymyr Singalevych. When Soviet troops occupied Galicia in 1939, the bank was nationalized.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]