To strengthen its position as a preferred and leading real estate bank in the Nordic region, HSH Nordbank focuses their market appearance in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki, which has been proved very successful in recent years.
The bank now bundles the formerly separate teams under joint organisational management to reinforce their business activities in the local markets and their product offers. To help achieve these goals, Jens Erik Gravengaard joined HSH Nordbank as Head of Real Estate Nordic on 1 June 2006. Mr Gravengaard has previously worked with HSH Nordbank; his most recent assignment was with the Danish property company Nordicom A/S, where he was Chief Financial Officer. Ove Juven, Alexander Firsching, and Per Kirk-Andersen will retain responsibility for business activities in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. To further strengthen the pan-Nordic approach and to service the market units, all support functions and credit analysis have also been combined in a Real Estate Products unit headed by Henrik Blædel. All five managers form a joint management team responsible for the whole of the Nordic region.
Peter Rieck, member of the HSH Nordbank Management Board responsible for Real Estate commented: "We are convinced that this approach will support our strong position as a Nordic real estate financing bank in the coming years. We are therefore keener than ever to offer our clients one-stop services and a high standard of new professional financial package solutions. The organisational bundling will allow the company to reinforce the development of suitable new products for the Nordic markets, in particular for derivatives, structured products, mezzanine solutions and equity products."
Bernard Visker, Global Head Real Estate at HSH Nordbank explained: "Many of our real estate clients regard the Nordic area as a single economic unit and investment region. We are witnessing an increasing number of cross-border transactions in the Nordic region. These are being made by Scandinavian investors who are conducting their business in the various Nordic countries or expanding their activities using a more pan-European approach. We are also encountering growing interest on the part of international investors in the Nordic region, which has enjoyed prosperous economic development in recent years."
HSH Nordbank successfully started operations in Scandinavia towards the end of the 1990s. Since then, the real estate loan portfolio has grown to around €2.5 billion. In the first months of 2006, the Nordic Real Estate team generated new business with a volume of more than €700 million, while in 2005 new business totalled nearly €1.5 billion. The team currently comprises almost 25 specialists in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki. HSH Nordbank's global real estate team consists of 400 staff, more than 100 of whom are located outside Germany.
Source: HSH Nordbank
