Sydbank today reported a second quarter revenue of DKK 763 million after tax – the first dip after record-high results in recent quarters.

Buoyed by the first quarter, however, the Danish bank’s half-year profit has hit a company high, outstripping 2023 by nine percent, despite an increase in costs.

Compared to the first three months of 2024, the second quarter saw DKK 98 million less in revenue, but closely outperformed the same period last year by DKK 5 million.

Sydbank’s new CEO, Mark Luscombe, previously Country Manager in the United Kingdom, who presented the bank’s accounts for the first time on Wednesday, said the results were thanks to a “constant focus on becoming increasingly efficient”, which had mitigated the effect of rising costs.

He pointed in particular to pay rises and the abolition last year of the Danish public holiday, Great Prayer Day, which means the average full-time employed Dane works an extra 7.4 hours annually.

Shortly after replacing Karen Frøsig as Sydbank’s CEO on 1 August, Luscombe made headlines by taking the entire head office team on a coastal hike on the Gendarmstien – an 84-kilometre stretch along the German border, close to the company headquarters in Padborg.

“Getting to know each other is a huge priority. So we have to go out for a long walk, and then we have to talk a lot,” he told Finans, in his first interview in the role.

After Frøsig’s exit, the bank’s C-suite is entirely male, and even when V-level management is accounted for, women make up just 18 per cent.

Luscombe says it’s therefore on his agenda to develop the management structure of Sydbank:

“We have relatively ambitious goals for the underrepresented gender in the bank’s management,” he told Finans, ahead of the half-year report. 

Sydbank was originally founded in 1970 in a merger of several Danish banks. The head office is in Aabenraa.