maybe sound like this..In 2007 it acquired public finance company Depfa Bank. [3] The company remains a legal entity as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hypo Real Estate Group.
It appears they may still be in business for the moment, but recent news indicates that Germany is moving closer to taking them over, after sinking 102 billion euros into the bank.
"Germany sees no basis for talks at the moment with J.C. Flowers, the U.S. investor who holds nearly a quarter of the shares in stricken lender Hypo Real Estate (HRXG.DE), a finance ministry spokesman said.
"The position of Mr. Flowers would lead to a situation where the German government would not have full control over HRE," the spokesman said, adding this would prevent Berlin from pushing through a restructuring of the firm.
"Therefore there is no basis for talks at the present time," the spokesman added.
Chancellor Merkel signed off on a draft bill on 2-18-09 "paving the way for the first German bank nationalization since the 1930s." Even though it was to be a measure of last resort, that seems to be looming ever closer. From a Bloomberg article on 2-25-09: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/.....er=germany
Quote:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said saving Hypo Real Estate Holding AG must be “justifiable and cheap” for the taxpayer, suggesting she still considers nationalizing the lender as a measure of last resort.
“We can’t nurse a bank back to health that should actually be bankrupt by now and watch the shareholders walk off with all the money,” Merkel said today at a political rally in Demmin, Germany. “We have to make it as justifiable and cheap as possible for taxpayers.”
Allowing Hypo Real Estate to go bankrupt could have the same “devastating consequences” as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merkel said. While the German government is extending guarantees to save the bank, it is also “obliged to the taxpayer,” she said.
An expropriation of the bank would be the first in Germany since 1931, a move that could cast a shadow on the country’s image as a business location. Nationalization is only an option “after attempts to take a majority stake have failed,” Ulrich Wilhelm, Merkel’s spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Feb. 16.
“We don’t have an interest in nationalization and expropriation,” Merkel said. “But let’s be honest. Looking at a bank like Hypo Real Estate -- it no longer has anything. We’ve helped it out 10 times already,” she said. “We’re doing something so that it doesn’t go broke, but apart from that, the bank has already been ruined by those who own it.”
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