The Austrian banking system includes joint-stock banks, banking houses, and private banks, as well as postal savings banks, private savings banks, mortgage banks, building societies, and specialized cooperative credit institutions. The most important credit institutions are the joint-stock commercial banks, the two largest of which, the Creditanstalt-Bankverein and the Österreichische Länderbank, were nationalized in 1946; shares representing 40% of the nominal capital of the two were sold to the public in 1957.