Best Bank: Nordea |
Nordic and Baltic regional awards
Sampo Bank grew rapidly in the year to the end of March, with asset growth of an impressive 10.78%, and is well positioned for future years. However, Nordea, the largest bank in Finland, continues to lead the market in terms of assets – and its asset growth of 8.27% is notable – and return on equity, with a 21.33% return in the period covered by the awards.
In debt capital markets, only Deutsche Bank has been shown to have depth and breadth in Finland: the bank not only has the largest market share of deals in the period under review at 14.23% compared with second-placed BNP Paribas’ 10.92% but also attained that share with double the number of deals. Deutsche Bank’s bookrunner role on the Republic of Finland’s €5 billion deal in May 2006 was the icing on the cake: a total of €9 billion of demand was generated, allowing the 10-year benchmark to be priced through Bunds – the first issue to do so.