Nordea

Nordea Bank Abp
Julkinen osakeyhtiö
Traded as Nasdaq Stockholm: NDA SEK
Nasdaq Helsinki: NDA1V
Industry Financial services
Founded 2000 (2000), 1848 as Christiania Bank
Headquarters Helsinki, Finland[1]
Key people
 Björn Wahlroos (Chairman), Casper von Koskull (President and CEO)
Products Corporate and retail banking, asset management
Revenue Decrease €9.303 billion (2016)
Decrease €4.625 billion (2016)
Increase €3.766 billion (2016)
Total assets Decrease $615.659 billion (2016)
Total equity Increase €32.409 billion (2016)
Number of employees
 31,596 (FTE, end 2016)
Parent Sampo Group
Website Nordea.com
Footnotes / references
[2]
Nordea old logo

Nordea Bank Abp[3], commonly referred to as Nordea, is a Nordic financial services group operating in Northern Europe and based in Helsinki, Finland.[4] 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.

Nordea 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 Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Nordea serves 11 million private[5] 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 og Kreditkasse) 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. The name is also a contraction of the words Nordic and ideas.[6] 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 Brazil (Sao Paulo), China (Beijing and Shanghai), Estonia (Tallinn), Germany (Frankfurt), Latvia (Riga), Lithuania (Vilnius), Luxembourg (Luxembourg City), Poland (Warsaw), Russia (Moscow), Singapore, Switzerland (Zurich), the United Kingdom (London), and United States (New York City).[7]

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".[8] 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[9]

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 using offshore companies in tax havens according to the Panama papers.[10]

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.[10]

The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) has pointed out that there are "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.[10]

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.[10]

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.[10]

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"[11][12] Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull stated, that he was disappointed with the shortcomings within Nordea's operating principles, saying that "this cannot be tolerated."[13]

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.[14]

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".[15]

Tax evasion and the Paradise Papers

Nordea bank loaned billions of euros to shipping companies that owns vessels in secrecy jurisdictions such as Bermuda, Cyprus, Panama, BVI, the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man. In the Paradise Papers, Nordea was shown to have lent a significant amount of money to customers based in tax havens.[16]

Drug money laundering

Nordea was involved in laundering of drug money in Denmark by issuing 500 euro note bills despite the Danish police advising against this.[17] Nordea has admitted their involvement in the money laundering and has claimed they have stopped these activities.[18]

Subsidiaries

The global headquarters of Nordea is located in Vallila, Helsinki.

See also

Nordic headquarters

References

  1. ↑ "A Mega Bank Just Joined the Euro Zone; It's Too Big to Fail". Bloomberg.com. 1 October 2018. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
  2. ↑ "Nordea annual Report 2016" (PDF). Nordea.com. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  3. ↑ "Supplement to prospectus on merger between Nordea Bank AB (publ) and Nordea Bank Abp". Nordea.com. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  4. ↑ "Nordea's re-domiciliation is completed". www.nordea.com. 2018-10-01. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
  5. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-09-15. Retrieved 2011-09-05.
  6. ↑ "Vores historie". www.nordea.com (in Danish). Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  7. ↑ "Europe and the world". Nordea.com. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  8. ↑ "Swedish bank hit by 'biggest ever' online heist - CNET News". Archive.is. 29 June 2012. Archived from the original on 29 June 2012. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  9. ↑ "Nordea e-kod". Nordea.se. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 "Nordea grundade hundratals skatteparadisbolag åt kunder". Svenska Yle. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
  11. ↑ "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.
  12. ↑ "Monday's papers". YLE. 4 April 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
  13. ↑ Teivainen, Aleksi. "Nordea failed to implement operating principles, finds internal inquiry". Helsinkitimes.fi. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  14. ↑ Frida Svensson. "Detta behöver du veta om Panamaläckan". Svd.se. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  15. ↑ "Löfven: Nordea på skämslistan". Gp.se. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  16. ↑ "The Internation Consortium of Investigative Journalists - Paradise Papers" (PDF).
  17. ↑ "Hvad er forbindelsen mellem Nordea-direktøren og narkobossen?".
  18. ↑ Nordea criticised in Operation X
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