Dirty Money Scandal Gives One Swedish Bank a Way to Tout Virtue
The headquarters of Svenska Handelsbanken in Stockholm.
Photographer: Casper HedbergThis article is for subscribers only.
One Swedish bank is making hay from its lack of a major presence in the Baltics as a money-laundering scandal sweeps the Nordic region.
Svenska Handelsbanken AB, Sweden’s biggest lender by assets, is trying to get investors to buy its riskiest bonds by making sure they’re aware it does very little business in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The bank sold $500 million in additional Tier 1 notes this month with a promise that creditors would face “negligible Baltics exposure.”