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In the links yesterday, I pointed to an FT article detailing the Austrian government’s nationalization of the insolvent bank Hypo Group Alpe Adria (HGAA). The financial institution, which has 40 billion Euros in assets, is the country’s sixth largest bank. But, in relative terms, this is a very large bankruptcy – using GDP at purchasing [...]

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Moody’s anticipates continued losses at Danske Bank, SEB, and Swedbank due to large exposure outside of the Nordic markets.  In particular, exposure in the Baltics is likely to lead to continued writedowns for Nordic banking institutions.
The Irish Independent reports:
Danske Bank A/S, SEB AB and Swedbank AB will keep suffering losses from their non-Nordic businesses as [...]

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Across the world, governments are doing their level best to shore up weak banking systems in the wake of the most significant final crisis in decades.  Most market players appear to believe these efforts successful; why else have shares risen so dramatically from lows late last year and early this year?
While I do believe the [...]

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This is the assessment of den Danske Bank as reported by Edward Hugh.  The last time I mentioned the Baltics was on May 12th in my post “A bearish view on Eastern Europe.”  I ended saying the Scandinavian banks’ exposure to the Baltics is just as worrying and should be the place to watch before [...]

Denmark’s 11th largest bank, Fionia Bank, has collapsed after massive writedowns of 1.2 billion Danish kroner. However, the company will not face liquidation. According to Politiken, Instead of bankruptcy, Fionia’s assets will be transferred to a newly incorporated banking company.

In advertising campaigns, Fionia had dubbed itself the “bank of your future.” Despite the obvious, the bank’s chairman insists the future is still bright and all is well.

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This comes from the Danish daily Berlingske Tidene. It suggests that Citibank is cutting back all international lending. Citigroup has sold its German operations to a French bank and I understand they are cutting credit lines in the UK as well. In seeing all these stories together, one gets a full view of [...]

It is not just Eastern Europe and Switzerland where problems are popping up. This from the Berlingske Tidene, a Danish daily:

After Iceland collapsed and went into Depression, there were a number of reports in the press regarding countries with outsized financial sectors. The worry was that the collapse of Iceland was not an isolated incident, but rather a harbinger of things to come for smaller countries with large financial sectors. I wrote a post in November called “Iceland: a cautionary tale for small nations” which pointed to a number of countries that I considered vulnerable including Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. Even the United Kingdom has been a concern.

Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen is preparing Denmark for admission to the Eurozone. Despite my skepticism about the Euro as a currency, I would say that Denmark is a perfect candidate for entry. The Danish economy is already very well harmonized with “core” Europe of France and Germany. Their business cycle, monetary policy, political economy, and per capita GDP are all similar to France and Germany.

Below is my translation of part of a German-language article from Financial Times Deutschland which discusses the upcoming referendum in Denmark for joining the Euro in which Fogh Rasmussen makes some interesting contrasts between Denmark and the UK.

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EU governments have woken up to the need to defend the banking system by guaranteeing all or some of their citizens’ bank deposits. After Germany, Ireland and Greece, Denmark is the latest to do so. And Denmark may also be the one country that needs to do so the most of the remaining [...]