Swedbank

Three Nordic banks and one British bank placed paper in Swedish krona this week. NatWest Markets made its debut in the currency, while Scandinavian-based Avida Finans printed its first AT1. Avida Finans plans to follow this debut AT1 with a future stock exchange listing.

Sweden’s Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) has signed credit lines totalling Skr6bn ($638m), though the bulk of facility for the timber, pulp and paper company will remain undrawn.

Finland’s SRV Group has extended its €100m revolving credit facility, as full refinancing operations remain elusive in what is proving to be a tough loans market in EMEA this year.

Covered bond deals issued on Tuesday by the Swedish Covered Bond Corp (SCBC) and UniCredit Bank Austria were priced tightly but the market proved softer than recent sessions and price sensitivity limited the Swedish bank’s size ambitions.

Swedish agency Kommuninvest has mandated three banks to run its forthcoming Swedish krona green bond. The issue will be its seventh green bond, and its fifth in Swedish kronor.

BPCE and Swedbank attracted good demand for their sizeable 12 and six year covered bonds on Monday. Although the bonds were priced tightly, initial order book momentum was slow. The Swedish issuer did particularly well in the context of money laundering charges.

Walter Ahlström is joining Swedbank as its new head of corporate finance in Finland, as part of its strategy to grow its equity capital markets business and team. He is joining from Carnegie, where he had worked in Finnish ECM. He had been there for nearly four years.

Swedish krona levels look attractive compared to euros, say bankers, leading to a raft of large deals being printed at the short end. Swedbank and Deutsche Pfandbriefbank both benefited from these levels when they printed covered bonds this week.

Finnish chemical company Kemira has signed a €400m revolving credit facility, becoming the latest firm to switch its bank debt to sustainability-linked margins.

Jyske Bank said it was "proud" to have hit its targets with a new additional tier one in the Swedish krona market last week, but a slow bookbuilding process showed how recent money laundering scandals are affecting Nordic financial institutions in the capital markets.

Swedbank has removed its CEO and president, Birgitte Bonnesen, as revelations about potential money laundering at the Swedish bank exploded in recent days.

Sanoma, the Finnish learning and media company, has signed €550m of bank funding, some of it earmarked to fund its acquisition of Iddink, the Dutch educational platform and service provider.