Deutsche Postbank AG, Bonn, has acquired BHF (USA) Holdings Inc. and its operating units from BHF-Bank, Frankfurt am Main. It thus has a strategic platform to develop logistics financing worldwide, particularly on the US market. BHF Holdings has a balance sheet total of EUR 4.8 billion. Its main areas of activity are corporate financing and commercial property loans.

“With this acquisition we have ideal conditions to enter the booming logistics financing market worldwide. We benefit here not only from the experience of the BHF Holdings business in different regions in the USA, but also from its successful business that we will continue and extend. This allows us to develop our corporate customer business in the US market with the focus on project financing. Moreover within the Deutsche Post World Net Group we can support other group areas such as DHL and Danzas effectively on the US market. By doing this, we are making a crucial contribution to implementing the overall strategy of the Deutsche Post World Net group, to utilising intra-group synergies and to exploiting cross-selling potential”, points out Wulf von Schimmelman, Postbank CEO, on the positioning of the corporate and logistics division. In the retail business, Postbank is to maintain its tried and tested strategy of concentrating on the national market with standardised products.

All parties have agreed not to comment on the price. However, Postbank assumes that the acquisition will immediately contribute to the continued improvement in the result of the financial services division to the tune of over EUR 10 million.

The US activities of BHF-Bank were spread under the umbrella of BHF (USA) Holdings Inc. With some 100 employees the three subsidiaries of BHF holdings operated mainly in loan business. The focus is structured corporate loans and financing commercial property which is widely spread across the United States. BHF Holdings has experienced local management familiar with the German modus operandi, as the company was already a subsidiary of a German bank.

Postbank is increasingly establishing itself as a specialised corporate customer bank for payments and logistics-related solutions. In the Deutsche Post World Net Group, it offers integrated financial and logistics solutions. In doing so it utilises synergies within the Group which result largely from large common customer potential. Together with other corporate divisions in the Deutsche Post World Net, it develops solutions to combine logistics services with financial services to enable increasing levels of one-stop shopping in the complex areas of logistics. In Germany, the product range of logistics financing has largely been established. An important step down this road was the foundation of Postbank Leasing GmbH which has been operating on the market since April this year.