Small Danish bank Fjordbank Mors asked on Friday to be taken over by government administrators and wound up after regulators ordered it to bolster its balance sheet to cover its risks, Reuters reported. Fjordbank Mors is the latest small Danish bank to fail in the wake of the financial crisis, the most significant of which were the 2008 collapse of Roskilde Bank and the downfall in February this year of Amagerbanken.

State-backed German lender HSH Nordbank AG has formed a joint venture for managing its EUR3 billion Nordic real-estate loan book with two U.S.-based property finance firms, as the bank moves forward with its restructuring efforts, Dow Jones reported. HSH has teamed with property consultants Situs Cos. and special loan servicer Helios AMC LLC to create the new joint venture, which will initially service the bank's legacy loan book over the next couple of years.

Danske Bank and four other Danish lenders have had their credit ratings cut by Moody’s after a bank collapse revealed the country’s government was willing to impose losses on depositors and senior creditors in failed banks, the Irish Times reported. The rating agency said last week’s bankruptcy of Amagerbanken, a small Danish lender, showed that Copenhagen “is now far less willing to continue to support bank creditors at the expense of taxpayers” than just a few months ago.

Small Danish bank Amagerbanken said on Sunday that it failed to meet solvency requirements and had agreed to be taken over by state administrators who will wind up the bank's remaining activities, Reuters reported. Amagerbanken, the 10th small Danish bank to fall into the state's hands due to the effects of the 2008-09 financial crisis, said in a statement that fourth-quarter writedowns had wiped out its equity. It said it had agreed to transfer its assets to Finansiel Stabilitet A/S, the state company that administers failed banks, and the administrators would close the bank.

For years, Denmark was held out as a model to countries with high unemployment. The Danes, despite their lavish social welfare state, managed to keep joblessness remarkably low. But now Denmark, which allows employers to hire and fire at will while relying on an elaborate system of training, subsidies for those between jobs and aggressive measures to press the unemployed into available openings, is facing its own strains. As a result, it is beginning to tighten up, The New York Times reported.

National Irish Bank (NIB) has set aside €146 million for loan impairment charges related to losses on commercial property transactions, The Irish Times reported. The bank, which is outside the Government's guarantee scheme, said impairment charges related to bad loans were down €52 million on last year. The Danish-owned lender today reported losses of €133 million for the first three months of the year, saying economic conditions remained “very difficult”. The bank’s total loan book was €10.2 billion, down 5 per cent on last year.

Icelanders Saturday roundly rejected a deal to repay the U.K. and the Netherlands €3.9 billion ($5.3 billion) lost in the collapse of an Icelandic Internet bank, complicating the island's bid to access badly needed international-aid funding and render normal its relations with the rest of the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. More than 93% of Icelanders voted no in a national referendum, according to preliminary figures published Sunday morning by state broadcaster RUV. It was Iceland's first plebiscite since the island's independence from Denmark in 1944.

Regulators have declared Capinordic Bank, a small player in Denmark's fragmented banking sector, insolvent and begun bankruptcy proceedings, the bank's parent company Capinordic A/S said on Thursday. Capinordic is the 18th Danish bank to fold or be bought up by stronger entities since the start of 2008, though the country still has more than 130 banks, making its financial industry the most fragmented in the Nordic region. The highest profile collapse during the financial crisis in Denmark was that of Roskilde Bank which the government seized in July 2008 after loan losses piled up.

Iceland's finance minister will meet with some of his Nordic counterparts on Friday to persuade them to keep vital credit lines open to the cash-strapped nation, a government spokesman said on Thursday. Steingrimur Sigfusson will meet with Norway's finance minister on Friday before flying on to Copenhagen to meet with his Danish counterpart, Icelandic finance ministry spokesman Elias Jon Gudjonsson said. Read more.

Denmark's economy pushed deeper into recession in the second quarter, with data showing a much larger-than-expected decline in gross domestic product, The Wall Street Journal reported. Danish GDP fell 2.6% on a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis and was a record 7.2% lower from a year earlier, Statistics Denmark said Wednesday. Economists had forecast a decline of 1.4% and 5.2%, respectively. The figures mark the fourth straight quarter in which output has fallen in Denmark.