The name of Hypo Real Estate Holding AG and the complicated situation in Germany owing to it is nothing new for many. However, it has been found that lots of people are still ignorant. Here is a little information for them.
The Hypo Real Estate Holding AG is a holding company which is based in Munich, Germany and consists of several real estate financing banks. The company’s activities span three sectors of the real estate market: commercial property, infrastructure and public finance, and capital markets and asset management.
It is to be noted that Hypo Real Estate is the second largest commercial property lender in Germany. The bank commenced its journey from the real estate financing business of HypoVereinsbank in the year 2003. What’s more, before the shares were demoted to the MDAX, it was one of the prestigious 30 members of the DAX stock index of the largest German companies between December 2005 and December 2008.
In 2007 it acquired public finance company Depfa Bank and it remains a legal entity as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hypo Real Estate Group. The firm was bailed out by the Bundesbank and other German banks in October 2008 in the midst of the global financial crisis.
Now let’s return to the news that has grabbed the attention of the country. It has come to the knowledge that the German government is having deliberations over merging Hypo Real Estate with Commerzbank’s unit Eurohypo. However the same report has been denied categorically by the government. According to Torsten Albig, the spokesman of the Finance Ministry, “There are no such deliberations.” Was the report fake then? Nothing can be said but Wirtschaftswoche (famous German weekly business news magazine) was firm and stated a merger was favored as part of the government’s plans to take control of Hypo Real Estate.
It is worthwhile to mention that Hypo has received a total of 102 billion euros ($136.7 billion) in guarantees from the state and fellow banks. Nevertheless its financial position remains at stake still.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.