NordLB

Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale

Type	Public-law institution
Industry	Banking
Founded	July 1, 1970
Headquarters	Hanover, Germany
Key people	Thomas Bürkle (CEO) Peter-Jürgen Schneider (Pres. of supervisory board)
Products	Financial services
Total assets	€ 181 billion (2015)
Number of employees	6,343 (2015)
Website	www.nordlb.com

The Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (abbreviated NORD/LB) is a German Landesbank and one of the largest commercial banks in Germany. It is a public corporation owned by the federal states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt with its head office in Hanover and branches in Braunschweig and Magdeburg.

NORD/LB was established in 1765 as Braunschweigische Staatsbank. The main areas of specialization of NORD/LB are investment banking, agricultural and real estate banking, corporate finance, ship and aircraft financing and private banking. NordLB maintains branch offices in all major financial and trading centers, including London, Singapore and New York City. Today, NORD/LB is Germany's largest bank for national and international bond issues.

Before the financial crisis of 2007–2008, NORD/LB, like many German banks, pushed into lending to companies transporting the world's burgeoning trade in goods and raw materials, propelling Germany to the top spot in ship lending worldwide. By 2016, however, the bank saw a record loss of 1.96 billion euros ($2.1 billion), caused by 2.94 billion euros in provisions for bad shipping loans. As a result, it took full control of its loss-making Bremer Landesbank (BLB) unit, which suffered particularly from a weak shipping market that was chipping away at its capital, and sold a $1.5 billion portfolio of shipping loans to KKR Credit and a sovereign wealth fund. By late 2016, NORD/LB still had about 8 billion euros in non-performing shipping loans in its books.

In recent years, NORD/LB has developed a range of partners to bundle loan portfolios and place them with investors, working with insurers Talanx and ERGO Group, Bankhaus Lampe and Bavarian pension fund Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK). Its lending business runs on a joint IT platform with BayernLB.