Return of the Viking raiders
Nordic borrowers have been moving into a period of consolidation over the past six months to a year and this does not make for happy international underwriters. The four Nordic countries - Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland - are achieving levels of financing they could not hope to obtain in the international capital markets and, as one London investment banker testily puts it, in the next two to three years "they will gradually disappear from the radar screens".
Lars Norup, head of northern Europe derivatives marketing at Greenwich NatWest, says the big Nordic sovereign borrowers have been repaying debt for a couple of years. "Most corporates are in the capital markets but there is not much tradition in corporate bonds," he says. "The exception would be Sweden and its domestic MTN programme. It has reduced its debt quite dramatically over the past couple of years, especially in...
