May 11, 1931

Creditanstalt

Creditanstalt discloses a catastrophic loss and enters rescue

Officials announced the rescue in the same breath as the disaster. It still produced a run that took more than 30 percent of the bank's liabilities in two days.

11 May 1931: the number goes public

Austria disclosed publicly on 11 May 1931 that Vienna's Creditanstalt, the country's largest bank, had uncovered a 140-million-schilling deficit while closing its 1930 accounts. That was about 7.5 percent of the balance sheet and roughly 85 percent of the bank's equity.

Creditanstalt had told the Austrian government and the Austrian National Bank privately on 8 May. A weekend of secret emergency meetings followed before anything was said publicly.

Not a closure

Authorities announced a financial-reorganization program at the same time as the loss, so the bank did not simply close its doors or enter ordinary liquidation.

The government took the largest share of the recapitalization, alongside the central bank and the S. M. von Rothschild banking house, a major shareholder.

A run it survived on borrowed cash

Within two days the bank lost more than 30 percent of its total liabilities to withdrawals. It kept paying because the central bank supplied the liquidity.

Creditanstalt held about 1.2 billion schillings in assets against a federal budget of roughly 1.8 billion. Confidence weakened at other Austrian institutions as well, beginning a flight of capital and a drain on the central bank's foreign-exchange reserves.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes, 1 issue open

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Contemporary and scholarly sources commonly call this a failure or collapse, but “went bankrupt” is misleading if understood as a May 11 closure or liquidation: a rescue plan was announced simultaneously, the bank stayed open, and withdrawals were honored with central-bank assistance.
The later international crisis had multiple causes and transmission channels. Creditanstalt was an important trigger, but saying this single announcement directly “caused a worldwide financial meltdown” overstates what can be established for May 11 itself.