Danish bank's richest clients given a guarantee on negative rates

Danske's espousal of a socially responsible attitude to interest rates follows sustained criticism of the bank's role at the heart of a Russian money laundering scandal

Danske Bank A/S, hampered by negative interest rates for longer than any European peer, promised wealthy depositors it will resist a trend to pass the burden on to them.

Christian Baltzer, the chief financial officer of Copenhagen-based Danske, told Bloomberg that charging people to keep their deposits at Denmark’s biggest bank could pose a risk to society. Some of Europe’s top wealth managers, including UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse AG, have introduced a fee on large cash balances.

Denmark was the first country in 2012 to adopt negative interest rates, when its central bank reduced the benchmark rate to minus 0.2