HSH Nordbank concentrates on the promising markets of the North

Hamburg/Kiel, May 5, 2011 – In 2011 HSH Nordbank is planning a substantial increase in total income in its Energy & Infrastructure and Aviation Business Units.

‘We have been active in these promising areas of business for decades and are optimally positioned for these prosperous markets. We are convinced that Northern Germany has excellent future opportunities as a place to do business in these areas. We want to be actively involved in this process and enjoy the benefits’, said Torsten Temp, the HSH Nordbank Management Board member responsible for the Specialist Sector Bank, to journalists today.

The Specialist Sector Bank was put on a new footing at the turn of the year. Since January the global aircraft finance business has been handled by the independent Aviation Business Unit. At the same time Europe-wide lending operations for renewables and infrastructure projects were pooled in the Energy & Infrastructure Business Unit. Both these areas of business have been run primarily from North Germany since the beginning of the year. This means that HSH Nordbank is increasing its efficiency while at the same time underlining the importance of the location for these areas of business.

Segment assets amount to around EUR 5 billion in the Energy & Infrastructure unit and some EUR 6 billion in the Aviation unit. ’We intend to further increase new business in these units this year. For this reason we are holding in-depth talks with our existing clients, but have also already approached potential new clients’, says Temp. Overall, the Bank is planning new business totalling around EUR 1.6 billion for the two Business Units – EUR 500 million for Energy, EUR 350 million for Infrastructure and EUR 750 for Aviation.

’At the moment we are financing wind and solar facilities in Germany for an amount of around one billion euros,’ said Temp. He added that the portfolio included a total of 160 wind and solar farms worth around EUR 3 billion and that the Bank was particularly open for new business in Germany.

HSH Nordbank can look back on more than 20 years of experience in this market and is the leading provider of finance for wind and solar systems in Europe. The Bank is also a founding member of the ‘Verein zur Förderung des Clusters Erneuerbare Energien Hamburg’ (‘Association for the Promotion of the Renewable Energy Cluster Hamburg’), established in 2010.

In the Infrastructure unit the Bank currently has around 100 transactions with a project volume of USD 150 billion in the pipeline in Europe. These are to be realised over the coming five years. As a sector specialist, HSH Nordbank operates along the entire transport chain.

‘311 of the 642 aircraft we are presently financing come from Airbus. Around 40 % of all the Airbus aircraft we finance were delivered in Hamburg,’ Management Board member Torsten Temp points out. ‘This means that every fifth airplane financed by us comes from Hamburg.’He continued that every Airbus the Bank had financed helped shore up Hamburg as the location of the Airbus plant, adding that the picture for wind and solar systems was similar. As Temp says, ‘With these important core areas of business, we see ourselves as the region’s partners.’ In the metropolitan region of Hamburg aviation accounts for almost 40,000 jobs or one quarter of all industrial jobs in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The renewable energy sector alone provides employment for some 3,000 people in the metropolitan region.