Industry Financial services Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden | Revenue 9.847 billion EUR (2014) | |
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Type Publicly traded Aktiebolag Traded as Nasdaq Stockholm: NDA SEK Nasdaq Helsinki: NDA1V Founded 2000; 17 years ago (2000) Key people Björn Wahlroos (Chairman), Casper von Koskull (President and CEO) Products Corporate and retail banking, asset management Stock price NDA-SEK (STO) SEK 101.20 +0.90 (+0.90%)29 Mar, 11:05 AM GMT+2 - Disclaimer CEO Casper von Koskull (1 Nov 2015–) Subsidiaries PlusGirot, Nordea Foundation Profiles | ||
Nordea Bank AB, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a Nordic 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_states 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.
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Nordea unified its headquarters to be in Stockholm, although operates across both the Nordic and Baltic regions with over 1,400 branches. The bank is present in 19 countries around the world, operating through full service branches, subsidiaries and representative offices, although primarily provides services in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Nordea currently serves 11 million private 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:
- Sampo, 21.3%
- Nordea Fonden, 3.9%
- Swedbank Robur Funds, 3.3%
- 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.
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". 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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" Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull stated, that he was disappointed with the shortcomings within Nordea's operating principles, saying that "this cannot be tolerated."
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.
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".
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.