Swedish newspaper claims Nordea and Handelsbanken leadership held secret merger talks
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According to the Swedish finanical daily Dagens Industri, there have been secret preliminary merger talks between the banks Nordea and Handelsbanken, which never progressed to the stage of formal negotiations.
According to the paper’s Wednesday edition, the bank’s chairmen Hans Dahlborg (Nordea) and Lars Grönstedt (Handelssbanken) discussed the matter before Grönstedt was suddenly dismissed from the bank at the beginning of April.
The merger project was not explored in the Handelsbanken board, although the paper suggests that the Nordea board was aware of the existence of the talks. The newspaper drew the conclusion that Grönstedt's hasty departure and the discovery of the informal discussions were not unrelated.
Nordea’s Dalborg and the Handelsbanken Press Officer Johan Lagerström declined to comment to the paper in any way on the subject. Dagens Industri were unable to reach Grönstedt.
According to Dagens Industri, a Nordea board member, the Sampo Group CEO Björn Wahlroos, reported on the talks at a meeting of investors some days ago.
Wahlroos considered that with new faces now at the top it was unlikely any merger would transpire in this form.
Nordea is itself the result of successive mergers and acquisitions of the Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian banks Nordbanken, Merita Bank, Unibank, and Kreditkassen (Christiania Bank) that were carried out between 1997 and 2000.
Merita in turn came into being through the merging in 1995 of two large Finnish commercial banks, Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) and Union Bank of Finland (SYP).
Handelsbanken gained a foothold in Finnish banking through acquiring the healthy parts of the ailing Skopbank in 1995.
At the same time, the Swedish banking group decided to open branch offices in several major Finnish cities, and it now has 44 Finnish outlets and is the country’s fourth-largest bank.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 29.5.2008 - TODAY |
 Swedish newspaper claims Nordea and Handelsbanken leadership held secret merger talks |
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