Danish FSA to Unveil Bank Board Failures as Early as Next Week

Denmark’s financial regulator will identify as early as next week how many boards fail to meet more stringent qualifications for serving imposed after more than dozen banks failed or were forced to merge.

The Financial Supervisory Authority will release its review after shifting through reports by banks, pension funds and insurance companies documenting their compliance with the new requirements, including relevant management experience, Soeren Moeller Christensen, spokesman for the FSA, said.

“We won’t go into specifics before the report is disclosed,” he said by e-mail today.

Denmark’s financial institutions faced a Nov. 1 deadline to submit their documentation. The Copenhagen-based agency said in July, when it presented the final requirements, that it would take action against non-compliant institutions if they failed to reconstitute their boards to meet the new rules at their annual general meetings.

Jyske Bank A/S, (JYSK) Denmark’s second-largest listed lender, last week took over Sparekassen Lolland A/S after the FSA demanded at least 289 million kroner ($53 million) in additional writedowns, pushing the lender’s capital levels below regulatory requirements. Anders Dam, Jyske’s chief executive officer, said commercial loans caused Sparekassen Lolland’s failure.

Boards of failed banks have given managers too much leeway and didn’t check their decisions, the FSA said in March. Half of Denmark’s 20 biggest banks don’t have a board member with bank industry management experience, Ulrik Noedgaard, general director of the FSA, said last year when he announced the agency would develop new requirements.

To contact the reporter on this story: Frances Schwartzkopff in Copenhagen at fschwartzko1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christian Wienberg at cwienberg@bloomberg.net; Tasneem Brogger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net