HSH Nordbank confident its state aid meets EU rules - CFO
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German landesbank HSH Nordbank [HSH.UL], one of the world's top maritime lenders, is confident the European Commission will decide that the bailout of the lender complied with its state aid rules, its chief financial officer told a German paper.
"I believe we have a good chance to pass the proceedings. We have proven in the past years that we are making headway in compensating for aid that we have received," Stefan Ermisch told Boersen-Zeitung in an interview published on Saturday.
In June 2013 the European Commission temporarily approved a total of 10 billion euros (7.88 billion pounds) in state aid to the landesbank from its majority shareholders. A final decision is expected in the first quarter of 2015.
Germany's landesbanks, which belong to state governments and whose main purpose is to support their regional economy, lost billions of euros on risky investments in the financial crisis and some of them required state-funded bailouts.
The European Commission requires banks that receive state aid at least to undergo substantial restructuring, shrink their balance sheets and spin off some activities to avoid distorting competition with healthy lenders.
HSH, which is 85-percent owned by the German regional states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, has to pay several hundred million euros annually for the state guarantees. It has been hard hit by a long slump in the shipping industry.
Ermisch said that the bank was fully on track to achieve 8-9 million euros in new business this year, adding it aimed for new business with corporate customers of 2.5-3 billion euros in both 2015 and 2016.
He also said the bank would yet again book high risk provisions for its shipping business when it presents nine-month results on Dec. 12.
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz, editing by Louise Heavens)
