Danske Bank expects loan losses to continue

DANSKE Bank A/S doesn’t expect loan losses at its Irish unit to improve until next year as the housing market takes longer to recover than the lender first estimated.

“We currently don’t see any concrete signs of improvement in the property market despite the fact that the Irish economy looks to be picking up,” said Thomas Borgen, the head of Danske’s international banking activities, in an e-mailed reply to questions.

“We still expect continued high writedowns in the second half of 2011. We think we have to move into 2012 before the property market might have bottomed out.”