| Global Awards for Excellence | ||
| Nordic & Baltic Awards for Excellence | ||
| Denmark | Finland | Norway |
| Sweden | ||
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Best bank: Danske Bank |
Measured by total assets, Danske Bank Group is the largest financial enterprise in Denmark and one of the largest in the Nordic region. The group offers Danish and international customers a wide range of services covering banking, mortgage finance, insurance, leasing, real-estate brokerage and asset management.
Like all Danish banks, Danske has become reliant on the state to support it during a downturn that has led to large increases in bad corporate loans. It has been able to draw on DKr26 billion ($4.9 billion) of hybrid capital that has at least insulated the bank against the worst potential effects on its funding costs of ratings downgrades. Loan impairments were lower in the first quarter of 2009 than in the fourth quarter of 2008, although they were still substantial against Danish SMEs in the consumer durables, commercial property and transport sectors.
The bank is at least receiving some benefit from higher lending margins.
Danske Markets was also able to produce strong trading profits amid high volatility in the first quarter that helped cover the loan losses. This strong profit mainly came from high volumes of customer trading and hedging, often in plain-vanilla products such as government bonds, at wider bid-offer spreads than in the past. Danske increased its share of the local market in such instruments as many international banks withdrew.
Nordea Corporate Finance has been involved in most of the large and complex Danish M&A transactions over the past 12 months, the largest and most complex of which is the merger between the national postal service providers of Denmark and Sweden – Post Danmark and Posten AB. As exclusive adviser to Post Danmark, CVC Capital Partners and the Danish state, Nordea has been integral to the deal, which creates one of the largest infrastructure companies in the region. Nordea was exclusive financial adviser to EQT in the largest private-equity deal last year (the €268 million acquisition of KMD) and advised on the first Danish P2P transaction since 2005. The bank also had a strong year in equities issuance, playing a key role as joint global coordinator and joint bookrunner on the Carlsberg rights issue – the single largest primary equity market deal in Danish history.
