Rating agency Scope has published its first ratings of financial institutions in the Nordic region — covering Danske, DNB, Nordea and Swedbank — and noted strong prudential and credit metrics supported by stable funding — notably through covered bonds — but also overheating housing prices in Norway and Sweden.
A solid start to the Nordic third quarter bank reporting season from Swedbank on Tuesday was built on by Handelsbanken and SEB, but Nordea fell short of consensus expectations, while in Norway DNB beat forecasts.
Nordea priced a ¥100bn (Eu720m, Skr6.47bn) three tranche Samurai today (Thursday), with a lead banker noting that the deal beat a Rabobank Samurai from last week on pricing and size.
The Nordic first quarter reporting season is well underway, with Danske today (Thursday) the latest to announce results. Mats Anderson, equity research analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, says that results have been marginally better than expected, boding well for the rest of the year.
Nordea Bank priced a $2.25bn triple tranche senior unsecured bond on Monday, the last day of the first quarter, with a syndicate official at one of the leads noting that a larger deal may have been possible.
Sweden’s Nordea was one of three issuers that reopened the FIG bond market after a week-and-a-half without supply on Monday, pricing a Eu1.25bn seven year senior unsecured deal. SEB followed suit on Wednesday with a Eu1bn deal, also in the “sweet spot” seven year maturity.
Swedbank and Nordea kicked off the Nordic fourth quarter reporting season this week, with a miss on net profit leading to profits coming in short of consensus expectations.
Nordea has received approval to apply the advanced internal ratings-based (IRB) approach to its corporate exposures in the Nordic region, which will boost its pro forma Q3 2013 Core Tier 1 capital ratio by 0.7 percentage points, the bank said yesterday (Wednesday).
Nordea Bank Finland got the ball rolling in euro benchmark covered bonds in 2014 when it priced one of the first deals of the year on Tuesday, with Eu8.5bn across nine issues priced by today (Thursday), including one for Norway’s Sparebanken Vest.
Nordea has recruited Swedish central banker Mattias Persson as head of group funding to replace Fanny Borgström, the bank announced in mid-July.