Best bank - Nordea
Best debt house - Nordea Markets
Best equity house - Nordea Securities
Best M&A house - Goldman Sachs
Best local partner - Conventum
Nordea is the leading bank in Finland. The other major banks in Finland are the co operative banks and Sampo, a corporate bank, while Nordea is strong across the board and has a 40% market share. Nordea has a large network in Finland, with 440 branches, 3.3 million personal banking customers and 330,000 corporate customers.
Nordea does a good job at keeping its corporate customers happy with good cash management services, which is making it difficult for other banks to gain on the bank in Finland, according to analysts.
The bank has also been innovative in deciding to outsource its international research to Standard & Poor's, while retaining its in-house domestic research team, in April this year. This enabled it to provide independent research to its customers as well as rationalizing this part of its business.
At the end of the first quarter of 2003, Nordea had e262 billion in total assets and its operating profit in the first quarter of this year was e446 million.