ANNUAL REPORT 2008 - DG Hyp

Our Management Board from left to right: Dr. Georg Reutter, Hans-Theo Macke (Chairman), Manfred Salber
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear business associates,
The year 2008 will be remembered as the year of the worldwide financial markets crisis, a crisis that
has rapidly spread to the real economy and a crisis that we, like every other bank, have been unable
to avoid entirely unscathed. However, from DG HYP’s perspective, 2008 was also a year
marked by the Bank’s successful strategic realignment as a commercial real estate bank within the
German Cooperative Financial Services Network.
The financial markets crisis is increasingly impeding worldwide money and capital movements and
has caused the interbank and Pfandbrief markets to grind to a halt. This can be attributed to the
huge loss in confidence among market participants, without which the money and capital markets
cannot function properly. To an ever greater extent, the crisis is having an impact beyond the financial
sector itself, causing a worldwide drop in economic growth. The commercial real estate markets
have also been hit by this development, with a significant reduction in transaction volumes being
recorded during the second half of 2008.
Despite such difficult market conditions, we were able to increase new business in commercial real
estate finance at home and abroad during the past financial year and achieved our operational
goals. The fact that we are strongly anchored in the German Cooperative Financial Services Network,
and thanks to our being integrated into DZ BANK’s group liquidity management, we remained
able to fulfil our customers’ finance wishes during the second half of the year.
As a result of the crisis on the financial markets, traditional lending business is gaining in importance,
whilst complex capital market transactions are being pushed into the background. One effect
of the crisis will be that lending will once again be viewed as a demanding and complex product
area, and as a product that must come with a price – with the recognition that loans that
cannot simply be produced in as high a quantity as possible, like a commodity. This requires a high
degree of individual attention and quality in the form of responsibility and trust.
2 Deutsche Genossenschafts-Hypothekenbank AG | Annual Report 2008