BANKING OF CROATIA IN THE KINGDOM OF YUGOSLAVIA

merged into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I, it became economically the most developed region of the new state. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes changed its name in 1929 into The Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which, in turn, disappeared in the turmoil of World War II.The citizens trusted the private Croatian banks more than the newly founded state banks. Croatian banks financed the economic growth of the new Yugoslav state and the main investor of Croatian industry in the 1920s was "Prva hrvatska štedionica" bank.Because of the conflict of financial interests between Zagreb and Belgrade, the National Bank "Narodna banka Kraljevine Jugoslavije" didn’t intervene in time to save this leading Croatian bank in the 1931 crisis.Thus weakened and rehabilitated, the "Prva hrvatska štedionica" bank lost its leading role in the region.The exceptions to banking downfall in Croatia were the banks in its far South that turned their banking to the service industry which was less affected by the great economic crisis than the industry.The initial weakening of the Croatian economy after 1918 started in the field of monetary politics, yet the collapse of Croatian private banking which occurred after 1918 in the field of monetary politics, as well as the fall of private banking in Croatia after the Great Depression totally destroyed the economic domination of former Austro-Hungarian provinces in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.Such an outcome was disastrous for the Croatian economy; with the ruin of banking Croatia lost its main sources of finance