Danske Bank ended 2014 with a profit, but not nearly as much as the previous year. After tax, the bank posted a 3.8 billion kroner profit for the year, which was significantly lower than the 7.1 billion it posted in 2013.
The decrease in profit was mainly due to a goodwill writedown of 9.1 billion kroner's worth of bank activity and long-term assessments in Finland, Northern Ireland and Estonia.
Had there been no writedown, the bank would have seen an 82 percent increase in profits over 2013 with a posting of 12.9 billion kroner.
Still some way to go
"We still have some way to go before we have fulfilled our ambitions and the bank's full potential," Thomas F Borgen, the bank's CEO, told DR.
The bank expects a net profit above 14 billion kroner in 2015, and the board has proposed a dividend of 5.5 kroner per share – more than double last year's 2 kroner dividend.
"We will continue to review our business and take new initiatives to ensure a return on shareholder's equity of above 12.5 percent in 2018 at the latest," Borgen told DR.
