HRE Group encountered some severe financial difficulty

In September 2008, HRE Group encountered some
severe financial difficulty. Subsequently a number of
steps were taken in order to completely take over the
bank under existing commercial law, culminating in a
squeeze-out, not an expropriation, of all remaining
shareholders on the 13th October 2009.

About EUR 176bn of HRE Group’s assets were transferred into a
wind-down-agency called “FMS Wertmanagement” or
FMS-WM in 2010 with the objective of completely
winding-down these assets over time. A European
Commission ruling is mandating a privatisation of HRE
Group: DEPFA by the end of 2014 (under certain
conditions) and pbb (Deutsche Pfandbriefbank) by the
end of 2015. HRE is currently seeking to sell its Irish
subsidiary DEPFA in a non-discriminatory process.