German ship bank

Deutsche Schiffsbank AG
legal form	Corporation
founding	1989
resolution	2012
Reason for dissolution	merger
Seat	Bremen and Hamburg
management	Stefan Otto, Rainer Jakubowski, Tobias Müller
Branch	Credit institution

Bremen headquarters in 2011

The German ship Bank AG was a private specialist bank in the form of ship mortgage bank with headquarters in Bremen and Hamburg . It had the legal form of a stock corporation and was a 100 percent subsidiary of Commerzbank AG . The merger with Commerzbank AG on May 22, 2012 meant the end of Deutsche Schiffsbank.

In March 2011, Commerzbank announced that it wanted to merge Deutsche Schiffsbank with Commerzbank . Ship financing activities were to remain as a business area, although the brand name was to be abandoned. On November 9, 2011, Commerzbank announced that it had taken over UniCredit Bank AG's eight percent minority stake in Deutsche Schiffsbank. Commerzbank thus held 100% of the share capital.

history

Deutsche Schiffsbeleihungs-Bank AG, Hamburg, was founded in 1918. It laid the foundation for a partnership with the maritime industry that has lasted for over 90 years. With the establishment of the ship lending banks, a completely new path began in ship financing. The active use of the capital market became an essential part of the business model in order to raise the funds for the required loans in the interests of shipping companies and shipyards . The smaller denominations of the issued Pfandbriefe created access to investors who had either stayed away from shipping or only wanted to invest smaller amounts.

Deutsche Schiffahrtsbank AG, Bremen, was founded in 1948. It had two predecessor institutions whose history dates back to 1918: the Deutsche Schiffspfandbriefbank in Berlin, which was relocated to Bremen in 1945 after the Second World War, and the Deutsche Schiffskreditbank in Duisburg. Both predecessor institutes were particularly involved in the financing of inland shipping and were later merged with the Deutsche Schiffahrtsbank. It had already started to build up international business in the 1960s.

In 1989 the Deutsche Schiffahrtsbank AG, Bremen, and the Deutsche Schiffsbeleihungs-Bank AG, Hamburg, merged to form the Deutsche Schiffsbank AG.

After the takeover of Dresdner Bank in 2009, Commerzbank bundled all ship financing activities in the group in Deutsche Schiffsbank AG.

The Domshof 17 building was listed as a historical monument in 2012.

Business activity

The "Deutsche Schiffsbank" advised and supported shipping customers worldwide. It offers German and international business partners from the maritime industry individually structured financing solutions for new ships and purchases of second-hand tonnage. Some of the loans granted are loans that are granted against the ordering of ship liens ( ship mortgages ). Both ships flagged in Germany and ships registered abroad were lent, provided their mortgage grants a security comparable to German law. On the basis of domestic or foreign ship liens, the bank issued secured bonds ( ship Pfandbriefe ), the total volume of which in 2006 was around EUR 3.6 billion. Both ship mortgage bonds as well as unsecured bank bonds traded on the local stock exchanges in Hamburg and Bremen / Berlin. The loan volume increased as a result of the takeover of Dresdner Bank in 2009.

In June 2013 it was announced that Commerzbank intends to withdraw from the ship finance business and gradually reduce the loan volume from the current 16 billion euros to zero.