Ik zit niet graag op dit risico. Imho the only way is down
By Nicholas Brautlecht
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- HSH Nordbank AG, the world’s largest financier of ships, may draw several hundred million euros more from state guarantees than previously planned as non-performing loans and additional tax payments in 2013 prompt the bailed-out Hamburg bank to increase provisions.
HSH Nordbank will probably need more than the 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion) earmarked for the period 2019 to 2025 of a
10 billion-euro guarantee by state owners Hamburg and Schleswig- Holstein following its 2009 rescue, Thomas Mirow, the bank’s chairman, said in Hamburg last night.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we will exceed the 1.3 billion euros by a tick,” Mirow said at the Hamburg business reporters club, adding that the increase would come “after the decimal point.” Additional provisions of “significantly less than 100 million euros” widened HSH’s losses last year, though the bank still expects to post a profit in 2014, Mirow said.
Germany’s biggest shipping lenders, including Commerzbank AG and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale, face rising credit default risks this year as bad debt from clients struggling to emerge from the industry’s crisis mounts, Moody’s Investors Service said in December. Shipping companies probably won’t recover from the slump until 2015 or 2016, Mirow said.
Price Drop
Companies have begun to buy new vessels again, taking advantage of a drop in prices in the wake of the crisis.
Container shippers ordered 234 vessels with a total capacity of
1.8 million standard containers last year, which corresponds to about 22 percent of the global fleet, according to estimates in January by Hamburg-based vessel owner Hansa Treuhand.
The new orders are contributing to a “significant overcapacity in the market, which will not get less in the short term,” Mirow said. HSH Nordbank previously anticipated an industry rebound as soon as the end of 2014, he said.
HSH Nordbank, Commerzbank and NordLB are among the more than 120 euro-area lenders undergoing an assessment by the European Central Bank as Europe’s leaders take steps to break the link between troubled banks and borrowers of government bonds, which fueled the sovereign debt crisis.
The ECB wants to see a “spotlessly clean” banking industry before it assumes the role of banking supervisor in November, Mirow said. HSH Nordbank is “technically well prepared” for the review, Mirow said, confirming that auditors started their examination at the bank last week.
‘Materially Prepared’
The bank raised its risk provisions last year in light of the prolonged shipping crisis to be “materially prepared” for the review, Mirow said. He reiterated that the lender expects “a clear triple-digit-million-euro loss after tax” for 2013.
The 10 billion-euro state guarantee ensures that the bank has a solid capital ratio, he added.
“Uncertainty still remains over which standards the ECB auditors will apply to evaluate shipping loans,” Mirow said.
The path to European banking supervision entails a “very difficult dialog” between Brussels, Frankfurt and within financial institutions, he said.
If the ECB applies stricter standards to shipping loans than company auditors at all banks have done in the past, “new questions may arise, which at this point would be absolutely hypothetical,” Mirow said.
In preparation for the review, HSH Nordbank reduced the volume of shipping loans on its books to 23 billion euros as of the end of September. “That number hasn’t dramatically changed since then,” Mirow said. Total assets at the bank amounted to
116 billion euros.