Gunn Waersted, Head of Wealth Management at Nordea

- It is encouraging to welcome new Private Banking clients. It serves as motivation to strive for our vision of being the preferred Private Bank across all markets – acknowledged for our people and for creating superior value for our customers, says Gunn Wærsted, Head of Nordea Wealth Management.

The number of Nordea Private Banking clients has doubled over the past ten years.
The growing number of clients has been accompanied by a positive trend in customer satisfaction. In all Nordic markets the Customer Satisfaction Index among Private Banking clients increased in the latest index in 2012.

Read more about Nordea Private Banking in:
Sweden
Denmark
Norway
Finland

Casper von Koskull, head of Wholesale banking at Nordea

On May 23rd Casper von Koskull, Executive Vice President, Head of Wholesale Banking will be speaking at the International Capital Market Association’s (ICMA) Annual General Meeting and Conference.

This year’s event takes place in Copenhagen and Nordea Markets will be participating as a GOLD sponsor and of course be present during the whole AGM.

ICMA is a unique trade association and an influential voice for the global capital markets. It represents a broad range of capital market interests including global investment banks and smaller regional banks, as well as asset managers, exchanges, central banks, law firms and other professional advisers.
 
Over 800 international participants were present at ICMA’s most recent AGM and Conference which took place in Milan, in May 2012. As in previous years the quality of the event and high-calibre speakers attracted representation at a very senior level.

Liisa Jauri, head of CSR at Nordea

Nordea is among the most sustainable banks in the Nordic countries according to surveys conducted by Sustainable Brand Index. In Sweden Nordea shows a clear positive trend. In all Nordic countries we are among the top financial brands and moving up.

“Increasing awareness and our persistent work with systematically improving the responsibility in our core business have led to our position as one of the most responsible banking brands in the Nordics. We are working with our responsible lending, our products and services, our own operations, our supply chain, teaching teenagers responsible finances and not least our responsible investments with positive screening. Overall, we have a long way to go but we are happy to see our strategy is paying off, says Liisa Jauri, Head of CSR at Nordea.”

Awareness of sustainability increasing
The surveys were conducted in all four Nordic countries separately, and consumers were asked their opinion about the environmental and sustainability performance of companies in a variety of sectors.
Interest and awareness of sustainability issues are growing among consumers. Demands are likely to increase.

Nordea’s strategy of systematically integrating sustainability with business takes time but is solid.
This is the first year the survey is conducted in Denmark, Finland and Norway and the third year in Sweden. In each country 1000 consumers were asked about banks. Below you can see the results.

Results for Sweden

Results for Norway

Results for Denmark

Results for Finland

Helge J Pedersen, Global Chief Economist, Nordea

Like Baron Von Münchhausen, Europe will have to pull itself out of the swap by its hair.

That was the opening salvo from Werner Hoyer, the German president of the European Investment Bank, at an international financial conference which I attended last week in Luxembourg.  And even though Von Münchhausen was a fantasist and a liar, Hoyer has a point. Europe cannot rely on external aid, nor can the debt-ridden states assume new burdens. So Europe has to pull itself together and do whatever it takes in terms of structural reforms and economic self-discipline to get the economy back on track.

Read the full report

Please click here to see the interview.

According to Global Finance, the winners of this year’s awards are those banks that attended carefully to their customers’ needs in difficult markets and accomplished better results while laying the foundations for future success.

Christian Clausen, CEO at Nordea

- I see this award as yet another confirmation that we are on the right track towards creating the future relationship bank. We have a strong starting point, but we also know that we still have much to do. We will further develop our customer relations, and our efficiency programme will continue to improve cost and capital efficiency in the years to come. Our plan is to improve capital and liquidity buffers and achieve a return on equity well above the cost of capital, creating a sustainable bank that continues to attract competitive funding, promote new technology and drive efficiency. Ultimately it’s a plan to deliver Great customer experiences in the new regulatory and economic environment, which is what it’s all about, says Nordeas CEO, Christian Clausen.

A full report on the regional and country selections will appear in the May issue of Global Finance.

Allan Polack

Nordea is ranked fifth in sales of investment funds in Europe, according to a new international analysis from Lipper/Thomson Reuters.

Cross-border sales of Nordea funds in Europe significantly contributed to the prominent position. In cross-border sales Nordea ranked eighth in Europe according to the new analysis based on net sales in 2012.

-The figures indicate that customers trust that their savings and investments will increase when managed by Nordea – in our domestic markets as well as in the rest of Europe, says Allan Polack, head of Nordea Asset Management.

According to Allan Polack, the fact that Nordea funds are distributed abroad to some of the most demanding international wealth managers is a proof of the funds’ high quality. 14 out of 20 of the largest global wealth managers now offer Nordea funds.

-This also shows that the Nordic countries are not only able to export mobile phones, oil, windmills etc. Exporting Nordea funds is another Nordic success story, yet still an unknown story to many, Allan Polack says.

Sasja Beslik, Head of Responsible Investments at Nordea

All Nordea funds are today submitted to a semi-annual norm based screening. If a company does not comply with international norms and standards in terms of human rights, labor rights, environmental standards Nordea often engage in a direct dialogue with the specific company. 

This  appears from the annual report from the Nordea Responsible Investment &Governance. 

During the past two years Nordea has developed a new generation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) funds:  Emerging Stars and Swedish Stars. The stars funds focus on enhanced engagement and positive screening to select best-practice companies. Emerging Stars is now among the best sold funds in the global fund distribution.

- We have experienced a strong and growing interest for these important issues from all client segments, and we believe that companies that handle their underlying risk and comply with international norms create more stable and better long-term returns, says Sasja Beslik, head of Responsible Investment and Governance in Nordea 

Since Nordea as one of the first asset managers signed the Principles for Responsible Investment in 2007, the responsible investments approach will continue to become more and more integrated in Nordea. Today, Nordea has an ambition to become among the leading players in the European market and the integration of environmental, social and governance  issues into all investments funds is a key element to reach that goal. 

Henrik Lundin, Chief Analyst

This weekend a new European rescue package was launched. This time for Cyprus. A bail-out of an individual country ought not to affect the global financial markets, but the circumstances of this one will cause turbulence at the beginning of the week. Henrik Lundin, Chief Analyst in Nordea Sweden, gives his take on the situation.

On Saturday the Euro-area countries and the IMF agreed on a rescue package of around EUR 10bn, which included a one-off bank levy of 6.75-9.9% on depositors in Cyprus. The estimated receipt of EUR 6bn should in principle cover the country’s entire capital requirement.

The parliament of Cyprus was to vote on this unique and controversial proposal yesterday, but the vote was postponed to Monday to buy time. Not entirely unexpected, Saturday’s news caused mayhem at the ATMs.

An alternative that has been discussed is to reduce the deposit tax for small-time savers and increase it sharply for savers with more than EUR 100.000 in the bank. This would particularly hit British and Russian depositors, who account for more than half of total deposits, but probably calm the market compared with the current proposal.

We are going to await developments and the final proposals before drawing any conclusions as to our long-term investment strategy. But near term we are likely to see heightened uncertainty and setbacks in stock markets and the euro, increases in interest rates in the Southern European countries and interest rate declines in Sweden.

The events of the weekend show a harder line from the Euro-area countries. Perhaps an “experiment” such as a deposit tax can be allowed for a small economy like Cyprus, but such confiscation (!) of depositors’ money may give rise to unrest, cause problems for several Southern European banks and unleash fresh euro turmoil. So this experiment could come at a high price.

Helge J Pedersen, Global Chief Economist, Nordea

Helge J. Pedersen, Nordea’s Global Chief Economist:

What is the global outlook for 2013? 
The weak link is still the Euro zone, but in our new forecasts we look for growth in the global economy of 3.3 per cent in 2013, rising to 4 per cent in 2014.

Both the US and China can look forward to solid progress over the coming years. In the US, debt reduction in the private sector seems to be over and done with, which paves the way for higher consumer spending and rising business investment. Also, the labour market is slowly regaining its former strength and house prices are on the rise again. The Chinese economy is now gathering momentum again underpinned by public infrastructure investments and an expansionary monetary policy. The main growth engine going forward will be consumer spending, driven by the rapidly growing middle class.

Japan however, has slid back into recession and the main priority there is to get the economy back on track and finally escape the long-running paradigm of deflation and weak growth. 

How are the Nordic economies doing?
Despite solid public finances and underlying strong competitiveness, the Nordic economies could not escape the fallout from the weak economic performance in the Euro zone in 2012; they all started the 2013 on a weaker note. But the brighter international outlook will also lighten the situation in the Nordic countries in the years ahead when exports should gain momentum again.

Despite an increased unemployment, the Swedish households are still doing well and are expected to be the main growth engine during the forecast horizon. In Norway, consumption growth is likely to pick up again and housing and oil investment will continue to grow and public demand will increase moderately. Denmark is close to a new technical recession, but the government’s reform policy has laid the groundwork for the Danish economy being well positioned to benefit once the international cycle improves again. The outlook for the Finnish economy is still gloomy. There are no obvious growth drivers in the very near term, but some hope that exports may pick up later in the year, while imports should remain weak due to subdued domestic demand.

What about the development in the troubled Euro-zone?
Although the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transaction programme (OMT) for buying debt-ridden countries’ bonds largely eliminated the latent risk of a Euro area collapse, and risk appetite has returned to the financial markets, we still see no definite signs of better times for Europe.

The outlook for the Southern European countries is particularly worrying. These countries are hard hit by necessary tightening of public finances and painful economic reforms, while credit standards are still tight. Luckily, we see signs that the important German economy is shifting into a higher gear again after a temporary growth lull. Sustained growth in Germany is a key condition for the rest of the Euro area also emerging from the recession during the forecast horizon.

Read the press release

Read the report on nordeamarkets.com