Kiel (dpa / lno) – The disaster surrounding the former HSH Nordbank will cost the former owner states Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg around five billion euros each, according to the Kiel Finance Minister Monika Heinold. That said the Green politician of the German Press Agency. This corresponds roughly to the amount that the federal states had given the bank as a guarantee during the financial crisis. “I was skeptical at the time, but I would not have thought that the guarantee would actually come into effect in full,” said Heinold. Both countries had repeatedly saved their former joint Landesbank from bankruptcy at a cost of billions and then sold it in 2018 on EU instructions – at a loss to an American investor group. Two contaminated sites from the HSH time are to be dealt with in the next year. On the one hand, the “bad bank” for bad ship loans, the hsh portfoliomanagement (pm), is planning the bundled sale of 108 ships that are still in existence. It was once 253. “The bidding process has started, the indicative offers are being evaluated,” said Heinold. So-called indicative offers are not yet binding. “Our goal is to receive binding offers in the first quarter and to make a decision on this basis.”
The pm, a public law institution (AöR), took over bad ship loans from HSH Nordbank with a nominal value of 4.1 billion euros in 2016 and paid 2.4 billion for them. The loans were all secured by ships. Their values depend on developments in the shipping markets. “The situation there is currently good,” said Heinold. “We want to use this development to reduce pm’s ship loan portfolio as carefully as possible.”
With a sale of the remaining stock, the management institute could be dissolved in 2022, as could HSH Finanzfonds AöR, which still manages bonds worth around three billion euros after the Nordbank crisis. These are transferred in equal parts directly to the households of both countries. On August 31, the institute is supposed to stop its work. “Then 2022 would actually be the year in which we mainly wind up the HSH contaminated site,” said Heinold. “That was a bitter and expensive chapter of national history.” From Heinold’s current perspective, too, it would have been better to sell the bank much earlier. The old Landesbank was an important instrument for the regional economy. “But the line came far too late.” For many years to come, the country will have to pay off the total of around five billion euros.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211225-99-501262 / 2
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