Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Dieter Stiefel, Alice Teichova (Hrsg.): Sonderband 9. „Zarte Bande” – Österreich und die europäischen planwirtschaftlichen Länder / „Delicate Relationships” – Austria and Europe’s Planned Economies (2006)
Damir Jelic: “Living in the neighbourhood” - Economic Relations between Capitalist Austria and Socialist Croatia in Historical Perspective
Damir Jehe of the Hungarian, Austrian and Czech banks were established - although their locations were limited to big centres such as Zagreb, Osijek and Fiume. That is to say that the relationship of the Austrian and the Croatian banking system was confined to just a few meeting points and a small number of main banks in Zagreb - something that had developed very differently in comparison to Bohemia and Moravia, both of which were highly penetrated by branches of Vienna banks. The limited impact of Austrian capital on Croatia during the inter-war years Foreign capital entered inter-war Yugoslavia from different countries, but most foreign capital was of British origin.15 Substantial French, Czech and American investments also took place - mainly direct investments. Since most of the capital entered Yugoslav territory while the Northern provinces were still part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, German and Austrian capital was expected to be of high importance. Surprisingly, its influence was visible but not to the anticipated extent. Personal contacts that had already been established and the migration of entrepreneurs led to the fact that an important share of their capital was invested not only in joint-stock companies but also in other, smaller businesses. Generally, we have to distinguish between some of the main modes of foreign capital penetration. Large-scale entrepreneurship, which operated on a high level of capital needs, was attractive for international financial centres. For the most part, they were interested in mining or in the export-oriented industry. That is where we have to look for the origin of British, Swiss, French, American, Belgian and Dutch capital. As we can see in the chart below, they controlled enterprises that were intensively raising capital. On the other hand, German, Czech, Hungarian and Italian capital had a wide spectrum of investments regarding their capital strength. In this group, we have to look for enterprises which operated both on the domestic and the international market. Relatively small-scale enterprises were profitable enough to attract foreign entrepreneurs who had trade and other business connections with Yugoslavia. They made important contributions to the development of a domestic small- and medium-scale industry. Austrian capital in Croatia belonged to this group. 15 Dimitrijevic discovered that most of the capital that showed up on the list as Swiss capital was actually British capital. See Dimitrijevic, Sergije: Strani kapital u privredi bivSe Juaoslaviie (Belgrade, 1958). p. 186. 252
