Caja Madrid, formally the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid, headquartered in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

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." Caja Madrid retrieved on January 7, 2011. "Plaza de Celenque, 2. 28013 Madrid" was the oldest of the

Spanish savings banks In Spain, a savings bank ( es, caja de ahorros or informally just ''caja'', ca, caixa d'estalvis, gl, caixa de aforros, informally caixa, eu, aurrezki kutxa) is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and granti ...

. It was founded on 3 December 1702, by Francisco Piquer, an Aragonese priest. Caja Madrid was the regional-owned bank of the

Community of Madrid The Community of Madrid (; es, Comunidad de Madrid ) is one of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain. It is located in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, and of the Central Plateau (''Meseta Central''). Its capital and largest munic ...

(Comunidad de Madrid). On 30 July 2010, Caja Madrid signed an agreement to merge with six other savings banks to form

Bankia Bankia () was a Spanish financial services company that was formed in December 2010, consolidating the operations of seven regional savings banks, and was partially nationalized by the government of Spain in May 2012 due to the near collapse of ...

on 3 December 2010. Caja Madrid held a 52.6 percent controlling interest in the new company.

History

The Monte de Piedad de Madrid did not charge interest on its loans until 1836 when a charge was introduced to cover operating costs of the organisation. In 1838, by royal decree, the Caja de Ahorros de Madrid was founded as a savings bank on the British model following the ideas of

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. Initially the Caja de Ahorros and the Monte de Piedad worked closely together but remained separate institutions. In 1869 the two institutions were merged and became the Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Madrid. Later, to show the importance of the savings side of the operation, the title of the merged institution was reversed and it became the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid.

Former business

Caja Madrid was the fourth largest financial group in Spain, with a turn-over of 180,700 million euros in 2005. It had 12,800 employees in a national network of 1,900 offices, and four foreign branches in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...

, Lisbon,

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

and

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. It also had 330 bank branches within the offices of the insurance company,

Mapfre Mapfre, S.A. (, officially typeset MAPFRE) is a Spanish multinational insurance company, based in Majadahonda, Madrid. The name comes from the old mutual origin of the company (''Mutualidad de la Agrupación de Propietarios de Fincas Rústicas ...

. Apart from its traditional banking business, Caja Madrid participated in a collection of companies, either directly or via the

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

, Corporacion Financiera Caja Madrid..

Social responsibilities

Caja Madrid carried out social work through two entities that it set up: Obra Social Caja Madrid and Fundación Caja Madrid. These carried out work on its behalf in the fields of social work, teaching, cultural matters and the environment. For example, Fundación Caja Madrid set up La Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2002. In 2005 the amount spent by the two bodies on behalf of Caja Madrid reached 161 million euros. Some of the bank’s users criticised it, along with the other Spanish savings banks for having lost its charitable character in the course of developing its business as a bank.

New headquarters

In 2009 Caja Madrid acquired a new headquarters in a newly completed sky-scraper office block known as Torre Caja Madrid (

Caja Madrid Tower The Torre Cepsa (renamed in June 2014, before was Torre Bankia)( en, Cepsa Tower) is a skyscraper located in the Cuatro Torres Business Area in Madrid, Spain. With a height of and 45 floors, it is the second tallest of the four buildings in the ...

). The tower had been intended for the Spanish company

Repsol Repsol S.A.
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, and the principal architect was

Norman Foster Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Nor ...

. The tower is now leased by

CEPSA Compañía Española de Petróleos, S.A.U. (''Spanish Petroleum Company''), commonly known as Cepsa, is a Spanish multinational oil and gas company. It operates in several European countries as well as in Algeria, Canada, Colombia, Morocco, Braz ...

and it is now known as Torre CEPSA. It is situated in the district of

Fuencarral-El Pardo Fuencarral-El Pardo is one of the 21 districts that form the city of Madrid, Spain. Overview Fuencarral-El Pardo is the district number 8 and consists of the following neighborhoods: El Pardo (81), Fuentelarreina (82), Peñagrande (83), Pilar (84) ...

in Madrid. The tower has 45 floors and is 250 metres high.

References

External links