EMEA News
HSH Nordbank: Ship Financing Will remain a "Core Segment" of Our Business
German bank HSH Nordbank will keep shipping as a "core segment" of its business despite its risky shipping loans having prompted the European Central Bank (ECB) to administer a stress test, ShippingWatch reports.
The bank passed the stress test last week, which means that the bank won't have to increase its capital reserves.
However, HSH said that they had been confident ahead of time that there would be no problems, having begun to strip its portfolio of non-performing shipping loans early on in the process.
"Ship financing is and will remain a core segment of HSH Nordbank's business," said an HSH spokesman.
"From today's perspective the stress test has no direct impact on our income statement."
HSH said that it would continue to pare down its number of non-performing loans to the shipping industry, which will involve mergers between struggling "one ship" carriers to secure them new capital.
"We will thus further improve the risk profile of the bank by a combination of further wind-down of legacy assets and expanding our new business with high quality assets," said the spokesman.
"Thereby we will improve the bank's risk/return profile."
The bank, which is the world's largest maritime sector lender, said earlier this year that it predicted a slow recovery for the shipping market, and that the situation would continue to be "persistently tense."
