“Our German banking system has worked extremely well. There has never been a crisis and I’ve never heard of a case in which a German firm couldn’t get the capital it needed,” Mr Rehm tells The Banker at Nord/LB’s headquarters in Hanover. “What’s wrong with German firms turning to foreign banks for capital, especially when they do business in those banks’ countries? I thought this was what globalisation was all about.”
That Mr Rehm is, apart from his personal conviction, not amenable to change is easy to understand considering the good shape that Nord/LB is in. To prepare for the tougher competitive environment that followed the loss of its state guarantee, Mr Rehm and his board had the bank recapitalised to the tune of about €4.2bn, more than half of which came from its government and Sparkassen shareholders.
