​Danish crisis fund winds up a year and half earlier than planned

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The Danish Recovery Fund (Danmarks Genopretningsfond) – the crisis fund conceived in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic to recapitalise companies struggling with its impact – is now being wound up more than a year earlier than envisaged.

The fund was put in the hands of Niels Bang of lawyers Gorrissen Federspiel last week, who will be handling its liquidation, according to the fund’s chief executive officer, Jens-Christian Stougaard.

When it was being set up, the Danish Recovery Fund – which began operations in January 2021 and was always designed to be temporary – had a provisional wind-up date of 30 June 2023.

Stougaard said he would now be assisting the liquidator in the months to come and returning to full-time consulting.

“Fortunately, the Danish economy fared much better than feared when the fund was decided on in the summer of 2020, and the companies that reached out to the fund for support were able to find (or are in the process of securing) funding from other COVID-related public schemes outside state-aid rules and with fewer strings attached,” he said in a post on LinkedIn.

EKF, Vækstfonden and Danish Green Investment Fund to merge

Separately, it has been announced that three other Danish state investment funds are to merge to form a single new fund.

The Danish government has agreed with the country’s parliament to merge Denmark’s Export Credit Agency (EKF), growth fund Vaekstfonden and the Danish Green Investment Fund into a new fund named Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund.

In an announcement on Friday, EKF said the goal of the merger was to establish “a more coherent and manageable public funding system to support Danish growth and export companies from the early start-up and further out into the world”.

EKF and Vaekstfonden would become part of the fund as independent subsidiaries, it said.

“The political agreement will now have to be converted into a bill to be adopted by the Danish Parliament. Only then will the merger be able to take place,” the agency said, adding that it was still too early to outline a time schedule for the merger.