Ship finance whizz Ulrike Helfer has been appointed to head up hsh portfolio-management AöR, the entity to which HSH Nordbank transferred its €5bn portfolio of non-performing loans in early July.
Helfer has been a member of the Kiel-based vehicle’s board of managing directors since last month, alongside Karl-Hermann Witte and Sibylle Rogge Camp.
Her career in banking spans 35 years and she has specialised in ship finance since 2000, most recently as head of DVB Bank’s Athens office and the bank’s exclusive representative in Greece, a position she held for over four years.
hsh portfolio-management AöR itself is 50% owned by the German states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein and was established to help stabilise HSH Nordbank.
The German bank is reducing its troubled assets in line with the recently completed EU state aid proceedings. In winding down its pure shipping loan portfolio of 256 ships, it hopes to become less dependent on the US dollar and therefore less exposed to currency market fluctuations.
