Danske Bank PR Snafu Highlights Dirty Money Scandal’s Long Tail
Danske Bank PR Snafu Highlights Dirty Money Scandal’s Long Tail
(Bloomberg) -- A routine review of the financial markets’ performance over the past 10 years has turned into a Twitter storm for Danske Bank A/S, the Danish bank at the center of the Europe’s biggest money laundering scandal.
Like many others, analysts at the Copenhagen-based lender reflected a few weeks ago on the past decade’s rich returns, and said they expected the next 10 years won’t be as good. They tweeted their review, which was titled “Goodbye to the golden decade: Will the next be just as good?”
The headline infuriated Danish readers who likewise took to Twitter to express their fury. How could Danske consider the years to be golden when it had admitted a large part of 200 billion euros ($223 billion) in transactions at its Estonian unit were suspicious? And then there were bank fees increases, protested angry readers.
The snafu put Danske on the defensive. In an email interview with the Danish newspaper BT, Kim Larsen, the bank’s head of communications, said the golden tweet referred to the review and to investors’ good returns. That said, the tweet could have been better, to avoid confusion, he said.
“We know that we have a big job to win back confidence,” Larsen told the newspaper.
Danske is under investigation in multiple countries including Denmark, the U.S. and Estonia. Spooked by potential penalties in the billions of dollars, investors have dropped the stock, which has fallen by more than half since the scandal’s dimensions became clear in late 2018. Since then, Danske has replaced numerous top bankers and board members.
To contact the reporter on this story: Frances Schwartzkopff in Copenhagen at fschwartzko1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net, Christian Wienberg
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