The ''Caja de Ahorros de Asturias'' (''Cajastur'') is a

savings and loan association A savings and loan association (S&L), or thrift institution, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans. While the terms "S&L" and "thrift" are mainly used in the United States, ...

of the

Principality of Asturias Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory t ...

. ''Caja de Ahorros de Asturias'' is the trade name of the enterprise while ''Cajastur'' is the commercial brand name it commonly uses. Its activities concentrate on retail banking, focusing primarily on the economic necessities of regional households, local corporations, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

History

The origin of the bank date back to 1880, when the Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Oviedo was founded. It became the Caja de Ahorros de Asturias in 1946 after a merger with the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad Municipal de Gijón. Presently Cajastur has around 200 offices in Asturias and some 40 outside the

Principality A principality (or sometimes princedom) is a type of monarchy, monarchical state or feudalism, feudal territory ruled by a prince or princess. It can be either a sovereign state or a constituent part of a larger political entity. The term "prin ...

. It controls the Asturian telecommunications enterprise

TeleCable : ''This is about the Spanish company. For Telecable, the Canadian company that operated out of Saskatchewan from the 1970s to the 1990s, see its successor company, Shaw Communications.'' Telecable is a cable company that operates in Asturias (n ...

. On September 21, 2010, Cajastur took definitive control of the financial business of Caja Castilla-La Mancha (CCM) with the notarization and presentation to the Mercantile Registry of the agreements and contracts for the segregation of assets of the Castilian-La Mancha entity and the incorporation of all its financial business (branches, brand, customers, deposits, loans and other financial products) to Banco Liberta, a subsidiary of Cajastur. This entity, which had moved its headquarters from Oviedo to Cuenca a few months before, elevated this change of domicile and also the substitution of its corporate name to public status on the same day, so that Banco Liberta, S.A. became Banco Castilla-La Mancha, S.A. In 2011 it was integrated into

Liberbank Liberbank was a Spanish bank and financial services company that operated between 2011 and 2021 when it was acquired and merged with Spanish bank Unicaja. Prior to its merger, Liberbank had a national presence and was a leader in the retail marke ...

. On July 23, 2014, the General Assembly approved the transformation of the entity into a banking foundation, in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Savings Banks and Banking Foundations. In April 2015, it was announced that the Liberbank group would operate throughout Spain under the Liberbank brand name only, and to this end, a process of remodeling the image and signage of the different branches would begin. As of December 31, 2020, the foundation held a 15.86% stake in Liberbank. On June 30, 2016, Manuel Menéndez resigned from his position as head of the foundation in compliance with the Law on Savings Banks and Banking Foundations, which established the incompatibility of holding simultaneous positions on the boards of banking foundations and on the boards of directors of the banks to which the former savings banks had transferred their financial businesses. He was succeeded by César Menéndez Claverol. Following Liberbank's merger into Unicaja Banco in 2021, its shareholders, including Fundación Cajastur, became Unicaja Banco shareholders. On July 30, 2021, the foundation's stake in Unicaja Banco was 6.56%.

References

Asturias {{Spain-bank-stub