Considered to be the world’s largest provider of maritime finance,[2] its main focus is on shipping, transportation, real estate and renewable energy.

In 2006, HSH Nordbank pledged to seek an unprecedented stock market listing, edging out its chief executive Alexander Stuhlmann to prepare the way.

[14] Similarly to peers such as NORD/LB, Commerzbank, Deutsche Hypothekenbank and KfW, HSH Nordbank buckled under excessive risk-taking prior to the 2007–2008 financial crisis, when it had sought to expand beyond its roots as a regional lender to companies and savings banks into global capital markets.

In 2008, HSH Nordbank filed a claim with the New York Supreme Court against UBS over losses it says it suffered on a $500 million portfolio of collateralized debt obligations linked to the U.S. mortgage market.

[21] By 2012, the court found that HSH should have been able to conduct its own due diligence and dismissed the fraud claim, a decision that lawyers interpreted as having broader implications for investors seeking damages for losses incurred during the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

[22] On April 9, 2009, president of supervisory board Wolfgang Peiner appointed Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to investigate recent management decisions of the Vorstand.

[25] Omega 55 was a hybrid CDO which exposed HSH Nordbank to the risks of default of other financial institutions including the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.

It is alleged that he inclusion of this last element allowed HSH Nordbank to move several billions of risky assets off its balance sheet at year end and avoid costly capital reserves which BaFin would require the bank to post.

In 2012 the Hamburg Public Prosecutors filed charges against six former HSH Nordbank Directors, including the former CEO Dirk Jens Nonnenmacher, in relation to the Omega 55 transaction.

Its CEO, Jens Nonnenmacher, and its General Counsel, Wolfgang Gossman, were accused of planting child pornography on the office computer of the then Head of its New York Branch.

[31] The European Commission, HSH Nordbank and its owners negotiated for years over a plan to restore the bank to health and avoid future state aid.

[32] In September 2011, all sides reached a settlement with the European Commission, ending state aid proceedings in return for tough limits on the size of the bank’s balance sheet and a one-off financial penalty of 500 million euros.

[35] In 2015, Minister-President Torsten Albig of Schleswig-Holstein and First Mayor of Hamburg Olaf Scholz negotiated a restructuring deal with the European Commission that allowed HSH Nordbank to offload 6.2 billion euros in troubled assets – mainly non-performing ship loans – onto its government majority owners and avoid being shut down, saving around 2,500 jobs.

[37] The European Commission approved a bailout in March 2016 and HSH asked investment bank UBS to find buyers for the loans which were extended to shipping and aircraft companies and for real estate and renewable energy projects.

[39] In 2013, HSH announced that it was taking provisions of 127 million euros in relation to illegal securities transactions, cum-ex dividend trades, after the findings of an investigatory report by the law firm Clifford Chance.

The transaction also saw the bank’s non-performing loan portfolio, principally shipping-related, sold to a special purpose vehicle set up by Cerberus, JC Flowers, GoldenTree and Centaurus at a price below its current book value.

[54][55] Earlier, in relation to that same lawsuit, the investor group had filed a 1782 discovery request in the United States Court system asking to be allowed to serve subpoenas on the bank's new owners; Cerberus, JC Flowers and Goldentree Asset Management.

[62] In September 2019, the Cum-Ex scandal returned in force for the German Banking industry as an ex-British banker, who had been charged with fraud in relation to the schemes, agreed to testify and explain the inner working and participants in these transactions in the Bonn District Court.

[63] On his first day of testimony the banker only referred to as Martin S. went into detail on how the transactions worked to defraud the German Treasury by making it appear that one set of stock securities had more than one owner.

"[65] On 14 October 2019, Handlesblatt Online reported for the first time that Hamburg Commercial Bank's current CEO, Stephan Ermisch,may have personal exposure for restitution that may need to be paid back to the German Government in relation to cum-ex trading.

His exposure owes to the fact that Ermisch had oversight of the departments at Hypo-Vereinsbank (his previous employer) which engaged in cum-ex trading and the bank is now seeking compensation from three ex-committee members in an amount of 110mm euros.