July 21 (Reuters) - The Nordic region's top two banks by value, Nordea and Handelsbanken, both surprised with stronger than expected second-quarter profits but said they were braced for tougher times as recession hit their main markets.
Nordea lifted its outlook for 2009 on Tuesday but warned that loan losses were growing more difficult to predict while Handelsbanken posted an unexpected rise in profit as income beat forecasts amid smaller-than-expected loan losses.
Following are some key facts about Swedish banks Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB and Swedbank:
* NORDEA:
-- The Nordea Group was established in 2000 with the merger of MeritaNordbanken, Danish Unidanmark and Norwegian bank Christiania Bank.
-- It has approximately 1,400 branches and 34,000 employees with a presence in 19 countries.
-- It has around 10 million customers which includes 5.2 million e-customers.
-- It is the Nordic and Baltic Sea region's largest asset manager with 126 billion euros in assets under management.
-- It operates through two customer areas - Nordic Banking and Institutional & International Banking and three product areas - Capital market products, Savings Products & Asset Management, Life & Pensions.
* HANDELSBANKEN:
-- Handelsbanken was founded in 1871.
-- It has 700 branches in 22 countries with approximately 10,833 employees.
-- Handelsbanken focuses primarily on corporate and private customers with a better cash flow than average.
-- The bank has a no bonus programme for any members of management or staff.
-- It has no sales target or market share goals and it abolished budgets in 1972.
-- Its key operations are divided into branch office operations in Sweden, branch office operations outside Sweden, Capital markets and Asset Management.
* SEB:
-- SEB is a North European financial group serving 400,000 corporate customers and institutions and more than five million private individuals.
-- It was founded in 1856.
-- Sweden remains SEB's single largest market, with approximately 1.9 million private and 200,000 corporate customers.
-- SEB has operations in the other Nordic countries, Poland and Russia as well as strategic presence in ten countries around the world. Around 60 percent of SEB's 21,000 employees were located outside Sweden in 2008.
-- SEB is the second largest bank in the Baltic countries and its operations in the region include a network of 200 branch offices, employing some 5,400 people servicing 2.5 million customers, of whom 180,000 are corporate customers.
-- SEB is the largest broker on the Stockholm and Oslo Stock Exchanges.
* SWEDBANK:
-- It started in 1820 as Sweden's first savings bank.
-- It has 9.4 million retail customers and 550,000 corporate customers.
-- It has over 900 branches in 14 countries with approximately 21,000 employees.
-- Its operations are divided into following segments - Swedish Banking, Baltic Banking, International Banking, Swedbank Markets, Asset Management and Insurance.
Source: Reuters; Nordea (www.nordea.com); Handelsbanken (www.handelsbanken.com); SEB (www.sebgroup.com); Swedbank (www.swedbank.com);
(Writing by Carl Bagh, Bangalore Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by David Cutler, John Stonestreet)