New “too big to fail” bank enters Eurozone

Anca Alexe 01/10/2018 | 14:58

The Eurozone has an eighth bank deemed too big to fail as of Monday, with Nordea Bank Abp moving its headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki, according to Bloomberg.

Nordea has USD 670 billion in assets, more than twice Finland’s GDP, and has made clear that its move to Helsinki was driven by regulatory considerations and its wish to be inside the European banking union.

“We’ll be in the core of Europe,” said CEO Casper von Koskull. “I think it’s important that we also can influence Europe,” he added.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, the CEO said growing through European acquisitions is not on his agenda.

Nordea is in the middle of a high-stakes transformation in which automated and digitized services are replacing human beings. The bank says it needs to cut its workforce by about 6,000 people as part of this plan.

The arrival of Nordea will significantly change Finland’s financial industry, with industry assets swelling to 400 percent of its GDP after the move.

Nordea will replace Nokia Oyj as the biggest listed company with headquarters in the country. The Finnish financial regulator had to add 10 percent to its staff to prepare for Nordea’s arrival.

Sweden will be left with a considerably smaller financial industry, and there are concerns about Stockholm’s standing as a financial center once Nordea’s gone. Opposition parties said that Nordea was driven away by the Social Democrat government’s hard line against banks.

 

 

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