Laboral Kutxa
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Laboral Kutxa Central Office
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| Industry | Financial services |
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| Founded | 2012 |
| Headquarters | Pº José María Arizmediarrieta s/n, 20500, Mondragón, Spain |
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Number of locations
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380 |
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Key people
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| Products | Retail, corporate, investment banking and private banking, insurance, asset management, private equity |
| 36.7 million euros (2013 First Quarter) | |
| Total assets | 24,400 million euros |
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Number of employees
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2,235 |
| Website | www.laboralkutxa.com |
Laboral Kutxa is a Basque credit union. It was born in March 2012 as a result of the merging of Caja Laboral Popular Sociedad Cooperativa de Crédito (known as Caja Laboral in Spanish or Euskadiko Kutxa in Basque) and Ipar Kutxa Rural Sociedad Cooperativa de Crédito (known as Ipar Kutxa). The merging project was announced in March 2012 and completed eight months later, in September 2012, although the new company wasn't officially presented until April 2013.
Caja Laboral – Euskadiko Kutxa was founded in 1959 by José María Arizmendiarrieta, a young catholic priest who had arrived to the small town of Mondragón in 1943 and had since then stablished a technical college and had helped create a few co-operatives, such as ULGOR (later known as Fagor), Funcor (currently Fagor Ederlan), Arrasate (currently Fagor Arrasate) and the San Jose Consumer's Cooperative (later and nowadays known as Eroski). Those co-operatives would be the first members of what is now called the Mondragon Corporation and, according to Arizmendiarrieta's plan, the credit union would serve as a financial instrument for them. Caja Laboral-Euskadiko Kutxa not only played an important role in the creation of the Mondragon Corporation, but also in its development. For five decades, its "Companies Division" acted as a promoter for new co-operatives. In the seventies, the union gave loans with benefits to the cooperatives that were in difficulties due to the reorganizing of the basque industry and the two energy crisis in 1973 and 1979 when unemployment rates were up to 20% in the [Basque Country|Basque_Country_(autonomous_community)]. Caja Laboral's motto at the time was "libreta o maleta", meaning being in the union ("libreta") was the only way to avoid forced migration ("maleta" – suitcase). Not only was Caja Laboral a credit union but also a worker's co-operative, which meant that its workers had a full right to participate both in the company's decisions and its benefits. Before its merging with Ipar Kutxa, Caja Laboral had 1.887 working members, 21.536 million euros in assets, 1.200.000 clients and 367 offices in the Basque Country and Spain. It was the first European financial institution in getting the Gold 'Q’ Basque Award in Management. In 2006 the union supported the United Nations Global Compact.
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