German Mortgage Bank Eurohypo Set to go Public

Eurohypo, Germany's biggest mortgage bank, is set to go public in the second half of this year, its chairman Bernd Knobloch said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday. "We'll be ready for the capital markets in the second half of this year," Knobloch told the business daily Handelsblatt. The newspaper said Knobloch was planning to float more than half of Eurohypo's share capital on the stock market. The bank is worth close to €8 billion (10.4 billion). Strictly speaking, a flotation of Eurohypo would not be an initial public offering (IPO), because around two percent of its shares are already freely traded in Frankfurt. The remainder is held by banks, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank, who all pooled their mortgage banking activities in 2002. Eurohypo has total net assets of €221 billion.