Nordea

Nordea Bank AB
Publicly traded Aktiebolag
Traded as
Industry Financial services
Founded 2000 (2000)
Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden
Key people
 Björn Wahlroos (Chairman), Casper von Koskull (President and CEO)
Products Corporate and retail banking, asset management
Revenue €9.847 billion (2014)[1]
€3.371 billion (2014)[1]
Total assets $702.92 billion (2016)[2]
Owner Sampo 21.4%
Number of employees
 29,397 (FTE, end 2014)[1]
Website nordea.com

Nordea Bank AB, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a Swedish financial services group operating in Northern Europe. The bank is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish banks of Merita Bank, Unibank, Kreditkassen (Christiania Bank) and Nordbanken that took place between 1997 and 2000. The Baltic countries and Poland are today also considered part of the home market. The largest share holder of Nordea is Sampo, a Finnish insurance company with around 20% of the shares. Nordea is listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, Helsinki Stock Exchange and Stockholm Stock Exchange.

Nordea is headquartered in Stockholm and has more than 1,400 branches. The bank is present in 19 countries around the world, operating through full service branches, subsidiaries and representative offices.

Contact in Europe and the World and in the United States (New York). Nordea International private banking has its headquarters in Luxembourg with branches in Switzerland (Zurich) and Singapore. Nordea also has representative offices in Brazil (São Paulo) and China (Beijing).[3]

Nordea currently serves 11 million private[4] and 700,000 active corporate customers. The group also operates an internet bank, which has more than 5.9 million online customers doing more than 260 million payments per year.

History

Nordea is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian banks of Nordbanken, Merita Bank, Unibank and Kreditkassen (Christiania Bank) that took place between 1997 and 2000. The name Nordea comes from the Swedish bank Nordbanken, which was based on PK-banken (Post och Kreditbanken; owned by Swedish state) which in 1990 purchased the smaller private bank Nordbanken, and picked up that name. PK-banken was formed in 1974 at a merger between Postbanken (formed 1884) and Sveriges Kreditbank (formed 1923), both state owned. Merita Bank was a 1995 merger of the former main rivals in Finland, the originally Svecoman Union Bank of Finland (Suomen Yhdyspankki) founded in 1842 and the Fennoman National Share Bank (Kansallis-Osake-Pankki) founded in 1889.

The private Nordbanken was formed in 1986 at a merger between two smaller private local banks, Uplandsbanken and Sundsvallsbanken. In 1991 the Swedish banking crisis, resulting from deregulated markets and a housing price bubble, forced the government to nationalise Nordbanken for 64 billion kronor. Bad debts were transferred to the asset-management companies Securum and Retriva which sold off the assets.

Ownership

Nordea is owned by:

  1. Sampo, 21.3%
  2. Nordea Fonden, 3.9%
  3. Swedbank Robur Funds, 3.3%
  4. AMF Insurance and Funds, 2.1%

Nordea Markets

Nordea Markets is the international markets operation of Nordea. It handles a broad range of investment banking products and services including fixed income, currencies, commodities, equities, debt capital markets, and corporate finance. It also supplies advisory services and internationally acknowledged economic research and analysis.

There are approximately 2,200 employees including Financial Risk Control and Capital Markets Services. Its main operational centres are in Copenhagen (also the main trading floor), Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm, and with regional offices also in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Singapore and USA.

The organisation's stated aim is to provide rapid, easy access to market and trading facilities and a strong local presence to its customers in all its regions. It operates with a mission statement of "Making it possible" and a vision statement of "A great European, capital markets and investment banking organisation, acknowledged for its people, creating superior value for customers and shareholders".

Online theft

In 2007 Nordea was the subject of an online phishing scam. The amount of money involved was "between seven and eight million SEK".[5] The theft was perpetrated by targeting Nordea customers with phishing emails containing a trojan horse, that was especially made for this robbery. Apparently these emails were sent out over a period of 15 months. According to Nordea, at least 250 people had unwittingly installed the trojan. The thieves evaded detection by limiting their transfers to small sums. Nordea has refunded all the victims and has implemented a new security system, Chip Authentication Program[6]

Panama document leak

The largest financial group in the Nordic region, Nordea has despite warnings from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) been active in infamous tax havens according to the Panama papers.[7]

The Nordea section in Luxemburg has in the years 2004-2014 founded nearly 400 offshore companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands for their customers.[7]

The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) has pointed out that there's "serious deficiencies" in how Nordea monitors money laundering and has given the bank two warnings. In 2015 Nordea had to pay the largest possible fine - over 5 million EUR.[7]

In 2012 Nordea asked Mossack Fonseca to change documents retroactively so that three Danish customers power of attorney documents had been in force since 2010.[7]

The director for Nordea Private banking Thorben Sanders admits that before 2009 they didn't screen for customers that tried to evade tax. "In the end of 2009 we decided that our bank shall not be a means of tax evasion" says Thorben Sanders.[7]

As a consequence of the leaked documents the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) stated on 4 April 2016 that they had started an investigation into the conduct of Nordea, the largest financial group in the Nordic region. The Swedish minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson characterized the conduct of Nordea as "a crime" and "totally unacceptable"[8][9] Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull stated, that he was disappointed with the shortcomings within Nordea's operating principles, saying that "this cannot be tolerated."[10]

Other Swedish banks are present in the documents but Nordea occurs 10,902 times and the bank with second most matches occurs with 764 matches.[11]

The Prime Minister of Sweden Löfven said in 2016 that he is very critical to the conduct of the large bank Nordea, and their role and says "Â- They are on the list of shame too".[12]

Awards

Euromoney financial magazine named Nordea the "best provider of private banking services in the Nordic and Baltic region" each year from 2008 to 2014.[13]

Subsidiaries

The Danish headquarters of Nordea is located in Christianshavn, Copenhagen.

See also

Nordic headquarters

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Annual Report 2014" (PDF). Nordea. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  2. ↑ http://www.forbes.com/companies/nordea-bank/
  3. ↑ "Nordea Contact in Europe and the World". Nordea. Retrieved 24 September 2010.
  4. ↑ http://www.nordea.com/About+Nordea/Nordea+overview/Facts+and+figures/1081354.html
  5. ↑ Swedish bank hit by 'biggest ever' online heist | CNET News.com
  6. ↑ http://www.nordea.se/sitemod/upload/Root/www_nordea_se/Privat/internet_telefon/internet/demo_e-kod/index.html
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 "Nordea grundade hundratals skatteparadisbolag åt kunder | Svenska Yle". Retrieved 4 April 2016.
  8. ↑ "Nordea bank investigated over tax haven scandal". The Local (Sweden). Retrieved 4 April 2016. Reacting to Nordea's role in the scandal, Sweden's Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson told Swedish reporters: "It is a crime — tax evasion — it is totally unacceptable". Sweden's financial supervisory authority, Finansinspektionen, has said that it will launch an investigation into Nordea's overseas activities.
  9. ↑ "Monday's papers". YLE. 4 April 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
  10. ↑ . helsinkitimes.fi (22 July 2016). Retrieved on 22 July 2016.
  11. ↑ svd Detta behöver du veta om Panamaläckan publicerad 2016 april 4, 11.34 läst 2016 april 5
  12. ↑ gp Löfven: Nordea på skämslistan publicerat 2016 apr 4, läst 2016 apr 5 "Â- De är på skämslistan de också,"
  13. ↑ Waits, Douglas. "Nordea named best in private banking by Euromoney". CISTRAN Finance. February 11, 2014. (Retrieved 02-13-2014).
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