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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript as part of the Financial Services Sector, available at (001-212-952-7433) or http://www.twst.com/sectors/financ_servi.html

TWST: Can we start with a quick overview of Danske Bank and a little on the history behind the company?

Mr. Ovesen: Danske Bank (Copenhagen:DB.CO) is an old retail bank founded in the late 18th century. The bank has gone through a massive development in the past ten years through acquisitions to become more international. Last year we went into a merger with the third largest bank and second largest mortgage institution in Denmark called RealDanmark, which really transformed Danske Bank into an international player -- around number 24th in Europe. I think it was a good move and now we are in the progress of implementing this merger, which is going very well. The different businesses that we are in, is retail banking, which is a major part of the business mainly in Denmark and also in Norway and Sweden where we have made acquisitions. We have a 5% market share both in Norway and Sweden and these entities are going very well also. We also have a small investment bank where we're struggling a bit because the competitive environment is very tough there. We have a wholesale bank, which we have restructured in the last couple of years because the returns were too low, but I think we have done a very good job of restructuring that business, which is quite profitable at the moment.

TWST: Did the merger with RealDanmark add a mortgage component to your activities or did you already have an interest there?

Mr. Ovesen: That was clearly one of the rationales behind the merger because we had a too small mortgage operation in Denmark. Banks were not allowed to go into the mortgage market before the nineties in Denmark. Previously, it was a growing business, but the old mortgage institution lost market share quite rapidly in Denmark, when the banks were allowed to go in, because you are really competing on access to customers. The thing is that the banks are much closer to customers than the old mortgage institution. Therefore we see very strong synergies between Danske Banks very strong franchise distribution network in Denmark, and the good brand and the good diversity of the mortgage product that RealDanmark provides, and we have already taken market share because of that.

TWST: How would you define your current geographic footprint?

Mr. Ovesen: We have changed the focus a bit during 2001. We regard ourselves as a Northern European Bank, which is our core market. We don't regard ourselves as a Scandinavian Bank because there is a misunderstanding in the international investment community that Scandinavia is one market when there are actually four very different markets. You talk about Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. So you are not talking about just one banking market in Scandinavia. But we bought a bank in Sweden three years ago where we have grown the market share from 11/2% to 5%, and have taken market share away from the largest banks, specifically SEB and ForeningSparbanken who has lost market shares in the same period. We are targeting the upper segments of the retail markets. We bought a bank two years ago in Norway with market share of 5% also. That acquisition is a bit more of a restructuring case because the Norwegian market is a bit more difficult. But I think we have been through that and have a very good platform, so we are ready to grow there. In both these countries we have a target of a market share of 10% from an organic growth point of view. So I think we are doing well there. Then we have exited the Asian market because as I said we do not think we have any competitive advantage in Asia because of the type of the bank we are. So we have closed our operations in Hong Kong and Singapore and withdrawn from Asia totally. We have also somewhat withdrawn form the US where we have a branch in New York. We are primarily doing business now on an ongoing basis with US customers who have business relationships in Northern Europe or Northern European customers with businesses in the US, and then with certain money center banks. But, we are concentrating on the northern part of Europe. We are big in the UK and we also have a small operation in Germany. We are keen to expand in Germany when the market will reorganize, but we do not know when that will happen, So we are waiting to see what will happen there.

TWST: Is consolidation an on-going theme in Northern Europe, as it has been here in the US?

Mr. Ovesen: It certainly is also an ongoing process here in Europe. I think you have come to a situation now where it will be hard for banks to do more domestic consolidation, which is of course the most advantageous because there are more synergies in domestic consolidations. But I think you are now seeing that a lot of banks are looking across borders in Europe and trying to figure out what the next move should be. It is not easy to do a cross-border acquisition and then create revenue out of it because it is still hard to see where a lot of the synergies come from to justify paying a premium for the banks because the markets are still very different. So I think they are sitting there and waiting, but somebody has to move one day because of the lack of growth in a lot of banks domestically.

TWST: Could you tell us something about your internal strength and your competitive advantages?

Mr. Ovesen: I think we have two very clear strategies. One is branding where we do local branding. And, as I said before, I believe that in most countries, people want to be a customer in a domestic or local bank. Therefore, we brand locally. You do not see Danske Bank in Sweden or Danske Bank in Norway. You see our Fokus Bank in Norway and you see Östgöta Bank or another of our locally branded banks in Sweden. So the branding is very important to us. The other thing that is very important to us is IT. We believe we have one of the strongest IT capabilities in Northern Europe, because we are in a situation where we can run our Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, UK, and German operations on one IT platform out of Denmark. And this means that there are synergies even when we go across borders, because when you are selling equities, bonds in Sweden and Norway, you actually do the back office work in Copenhagen. So we do not have to build infrastructure from an administrative point of view in all the countries, which gives us a lower cost base to grow from.