The Danish central bank said Monday it has taken over the nation's 10th largest bank, a 124-year-old institution which had been struggling amid global financial turmoil and mounting losses on mortgage loans as housing prices fell in Denmark. Roskilde Bank will receive 4.5 billion kroner ($892 million) in cash from Nationalbanken and the financial sector in Denmark after it was unable to find a buyer. The Danish central bank also said it would assume 37.3 billion kroner ($7.43 billion) of debt in the deal. In July, the central bank granted a liquidity facility to Roskilde Bank and bought its debt until it could be resold. This was after Roskilde Bank said that turmoil on global financial markets and falling house prices in Denmark had forced it to make write-downs of up to 900 million Danish kroner ($187 million) on property development loans during the first six months of the year. Monday's move came because an audit of Roskilde Bank's interim report over the weekend revealed additional losses of a least 1 billion kroner ($198 million). “That means that Roskilde Bank no longer could live up to the law's demands about solvency,” Nationalbanken governor Nils Bernstein said.
