Нордеа Банк: История и деятельность скандинавского финансового гиганта

Nordic financial institution

Nordea Bank Abp, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a Nordic financial services group operating in northern Europe with headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. The name is a blend of the words "Nordic" and "idea". The bank is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian banks of Merita Bank, Nordbanken, Unidanmark, and Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse that took place between 1997 and 2001. and completed the exit from Russia in early 2022 following a 2019 decision to close the business there. Nordea is listed on Nasdaq Nordic exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Stockholm and Nordea ADR is listed in the US. Nordea has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, first as the Finnish arm of the Stockholm based group and since 2017 as a financial holding company. As a consequence, it is directly supervised by the European Central Bank.

Nordea's roots date to 1820 and Sparekassen for Kjøbenhavn og Omegn in Denmark, and a complete family tree of around 300 banks including some of the oldest banks in the Nordic region. UBF was established, in 1862, at a time when there were no Limited Liability Companies Act or banking laws in Finland. Therefore, it was modelled after banking standards in other countries. UBF eventually merged with rivals Nordiska Aktiebanken in 1919 and Helsingin Osakepankki (HOP) in 1986. KOP was originally founded in 1890 with its first branch at Aleksanterinkatu 17, in Helsinki. The oldest of the original Nordbanken constituent banks was Wermlandsbanken, which was founded in 1832. Nordbanken came under Swedish government control in 1992, following the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990s, Bad debts were transferred to the asset management company Securum, which sold off the assets. The Solo internet based banking operation of MeritaNordbanken was a global pioneer and leader providing mobile and internet banking access in 1999. The bank reached 1 million internet banking customers during 1999 with 3 million log ins and 3.7 million payments per month. Housing loans via Solo were introduced in 1999. The merged group had a banking market share of 20% in Sweden, 25% in Denmark and 40% in Finland and a combined workforce of 28,050. Nordea expanded into Poland, the Baltics and Russia in the early 2000s, with 2% of total revenues from the Poland and Baltics region. Nordea divested its Polish banking operations in 2013, with the sale to PKO Bank Polski for €694 million but retains a presence in Poland via operations and IT units supporting the Nordic banks. By end 2014, lending in the Baltics was €8.2 billion and in Russia €4.5 billion. In 2016, Luminor was formed by a merger of Nordea's and DNB's operations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania creating the third largest Baltic regional bank with assets of €15 billion and a market share of 16.4%. Luminor was sold to Blackstone, with Nordea and DNB retaining each initially a 20% share. Nordea was one of the Nordic banks, including Danske Bank, SEB and Swedbank, allegedly involved in the money laundering scandal, involving ex Soviet states, that emerged in 2017. Nordea announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Stockholm, Sweden to Helsinki, Finland in September 2017. The re domiciliation of Nordea to Finland put it within the supervision of the European Central Bank and within the European Union's banking union. In October 2018, Nordea completed the move of its corporate headquarters to Helsinki, Finland. +Historical performance, ratios and key figures for Nordea 1999 2019YearShare Price (YE)Total Assets (€ billion)Return on Equity (%)Tier 1 Capital Ratio (%)Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio (%), excluding Basel 1 floor19995.8418618.09.020008.1022416.16.820015.9724213.87.320024.202507.57.120035.9526212.37.320047.4327615.77.320058.7932618.06.8200611.6734722.97.1200711.4238919.77.07.520085.0047415.37.48.520097.1050811.310.210.320108.1658011.59.810.320115.9871611.110.111.220127.2467711.611.213.120139.7863011.014.920149.6866911.515.7201510.1564712.216.5201610.6061612.318.4201710.095829.519.520187.275519.715.520197.245555.016.4

Market capitalisation of Nordea was €29.3 billion at year end 2019, making it the seventh largest Nordic company and among the 10 largest European financial groups. Customers were targeted over a period of 15 months with phishing emails containing a trojan horse. Nordea refunded affected customers. Other Swedish banks were mentioned in the documents, but mention of Nordea occurred 10,902 times and the second most mentioned bank has 764 matches. 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. As a consequence of the leaked documents, the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) stated on 4 April 2016 that it had started an investigation into the conduct of Nordea. The Nordea section in Luxembourg, between the years 2004 and 2014, founded nearly 400 offshore companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands for its customers. The Swedish minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson characterized the conduct of Nordea as "a crime" and "totally unacceptable". The director for Nordea Private banking Thorben Sanders admits that before 2009 they did not screen for customers that tried to evade tax. "At the end of 2009 we decided that our bank should not be a means of tax evasion" says Thorben Sanders. In March 2019, public service broadcasting company, Yle, aired a program that revealed money laundering allegations against Nordea. The company was the biggest Nordic lender allegedly involved in the multi million dollar money laundering scheme, according to Bloomberg.