EANS-News: Hypoport AG to withdraw from Dutch joint venture
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Subtitle: Termination of financial marketplace joint venture in the Netherlands
Joint Ventures/Cooperation/Collaboration
Berlin, 12 February (euro adhoc) - Financial service provider Hypoport and its
partner Stater Participations B.V. have decided to dissolve their joint-venture
company Hypoport Stater B.V. which was intended to develop a financial
marketplace for the Netherlands. The joint venture will be wound up in an
orderly manner by means of voluntary liquidation. It is not currently possible
for the two partners in the joint venture to implement their aim of establishing
the German market standard for transaction platforms in the Dutch market. The
decision has been brought about by the situation in the Dutch banking and
real-estate market which has been depressed by the financial crisis for several
years.
Ronald Slabke, Chief Executive Officer of Hypoport AG, explained the decision:
"While the German real-estate market has performed very robustly since the
outbreak of the financial crisis and, if anything, has benefited overall from
the turmoil in the financial markets, the equivalent market in the Netherlands
virtually collapsed and it has not yet recovered. The volume of new home loans
fell from over EUR120 billion in 2007 to around EUR50 billion in 2012. Since
establishing the joint venture, we have created the technical conditions for an
optimum marketplace. In 2009, the platform won Banking Review magazine's
Innovation Award. But as well as functioning technology, relevant market players
are also needed on the platform in order to achieve a marketplace effect similar
to that which emerged in Germany some years ago. The current market situation in
the Netherlands has not allowed us and our partner to achieve this critical
mass. We have therefore decided to withdraw from the loss-making joint venture
and to focus our energies on further developing our extremely successful
platform in the German market."
One-off write-downs, expected to be EUR1.2 million, will impact net profit for
the year but going forward net earnings will benefit by around EUR1 million a
year from the discontinuation of start-up losses attributable to the joint
venture. Hypoport's preliminary results for 2012 will be published on 11 March
2013.
Further inquiry note:
Michaela Reimann
Head of Communications
Telefon: +49 (0) 30 42086 1936
E-Mail: michaela.reimann@hypoport.de
end of announcement euro adhoc
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company: Hypoport AG
Klosterstraße 71
D-10179 Berlin
phone: +49(0)30 42086-0
FAX: +49(0)30 42086-1999
mail: ir@hypoport.de
WWW: http://www.hypoport.de
sector: Financial & Business Services
ISIN: DE0005493365
indexes: CDAX, Prime All Share
stockmarkets: regulated dealing/prime standard: Frankfurt
language: English