Hamburg Commercial Bank (formerly HSH Nordbank) is a commercial bank in northern Europe with headquarters in Hamburg as well as Kiel, Germany. It is active in corporate and private banking. Considered to be the world’s largest provider of maritime finance, its main focus is on shipping, transportation, real estate and renewable energy. The bank is one of the pioneers in the pan-European project financing of renewable energies and is also involved in the expansion of digital infrastructure. In 2022, the bank won the “World’s Best Bank Transformation” award by Euromoney trade magazine. The bank changed its name from HSH Nordbank to Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB) on February 4, 2019, after the bank was sold to new owners in 2018. HCOB has foreign offices in Athens and Singapore and other significant operations in Luxembourg and London. History Early beginnings HSH Nordbank was created as a result of a merger between Hamburgische Landesbank and Landesbank Schleswig-Holstein on June 2, 2003. In the course of the merger HSH was transformed into a joint-stock company (Aktiengesellschaft) and thereby formally privatised, i.e. the bank is not anymore governed by public law. In 2003, the bank had a balance sheet total of 172 billion euros and employed 4,500 people. In 2006, HSH Nordbank pledged to seek an unprecedented stock market listing, edging out its chief executive Alexander Stuhlmann to prepare the way. Shortly after, WestLB agreed to sell its 26.6 per cent stake in HSH Nordbank to a consortium of five institutional investors, led by J.C. Flowers & Co., for 1.25 billion euros. Flowers had competed with three investors – Cerberus Capital Management, Hellman & Friedman, and Corsair Capital – for the stake. The investment marked the first part-privatisation of a Landesbank and its experience was being closely watched as an indicator of how difficult it would be for others to prise open the state-controlled sector. By 2008, J.C. Flowers injected about 300 million euros of fresh equity, in spite of the bank’s failure to have an initial public offering that year. Financial crisis of 2007–2010 Similarly to peers such as NORD/LB, Commerzbank, Deutsche Hypothekenbank and KfW, HSH Nordbank buckled under excessive risk-taking prior to the financial crisis of 2007-2010, when it had sought to expand beyond its roots as a regional lender to companies and savings banks into global capital markets. It had done so in anticipation of the expiry of a rule that allowed