HSH Nordbank will be purchased by the US private equity firms JC Flowers and Co. and Cerberus Capital Management LP in early March. The selling price is up to 1 billion euros, but the certainty of the deal's success is still not 100%.

Should the sale go through, HSH will be the first state-owned Landesbank to undergo privatization.

HSH Nordbank is owned by Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, two German states. It seeks to be purchased before March 2018, as it will face liquidation by the European Commission otherwise, due to its recent losses on unsuccessful shipping loans. Currently, JC Flowers already owns 5% of HSH.

Only six months ago, the bank's owners expected a sale price of roughly 200 million euros. But improved performance in shipping coupled with higher expectations and a decrease in the bad shipping loans all worked together to make HSH Nordbank more appealing to bidders.

HSH rose to become the world's largest ship financier in the early 2000s. Through aggressive expansion of its shipping portfolio, it achieved a balance sheet of over 200 billion euros. But in 2009, the global financial crisis crippled trade. Shipping companies suffered as they lost money and failed to pay back loans, resulting in a 13 billion euro buyout from German taxpayers. Presently, the CEO hopes to cut the bank's balance sheet to 55 billion euros by 2022.

HSH's main portfolio includes infrastructure, renewable energy, commercial real estate, logistics and shipping. It has already cut its balance sheet by over 10 billion euros, and more than halved the quantity of its non-performing loans. Furthermore, the bank expects to nearly double its 2017 pretax profit, and hopes to sell all the bad loans to investors. Its shipping portfolio will be valued at roughly 5 billion and 6 billion euros, and business partners will be mostly Greek, American and Asian ship owners. Growth is expected to proceed alongside a recovery of the shipping sector. On the other hand, the bank expects to cut its staff members by roughly 300 people within the next year, while the final staff cut quantity will reach 30%. On the other hand, private equity investors are intently cost-cutting at the newly acquired companies, hoping to improve them and quickly sell them at a profit.