Best bank
Nordea Best debt house
Citigroup
Best equities house
Alfred Berg and ABN Amro Rothschild
Best M&A house
Enskilda Securities
Nordea remains the top bank in Finland. It has a leading market share across products and is the largest bank in terms of assets. Together, Nordea, Sampo Bank and Okobank account for 90% of total lending and deposits in Finland but Nordea has the largest share in both areas.
As well as being the dominant corporate and retail bank, Nordea has good operating efficiency. The bank has sold its subsidiaries ? Nordea Bank Sweden, Nordea Bank Danmark and Nordea Bank Norge ? to Nordea AB, which affects any comparison with 2002.
Citigroup has the second-highest market share for bond issuance in Finland and wins best debt house for its deals for Fortum and for the Republic of Finland, and its strength in the loan market.
Citigroup advised Fortum on a combination of the company?s inaugural issue and an exchange offer on its holding of bonds in Birka Energy ? a company Fortum had acquired. In total this was a e2 billion deal. Citigroup was the sole lead adviser on the exchange offer and joint bookrunner with Morgan Stanley on the bond issue.
Although Nordea again dominated loan issuance, Citigroup?s involvement in such deals as the e875 million loan for Outo- kumpu and e2 billion for Nokia illustrates the bank?s strength across the debt markets.
Finland had one of the least active primary equity markets in the region. The biggest deal was a secondary share offer for Kone, with UBS acting as bookrunner. This was UBS?s only primary market deal during the period. ABN Amro has the second highest share of primary market activity and the bank wins best equities house for its involvement in two smaller, notable deals, its higher turnover on the stock exchange, and the quality of its research.
In January, Alfred Berg ABN Amro and ABN Amro Rothschild opened up the equity new issuance market with a e54 million accelerated bookbuilt offering in Outokumpu on behalf of Swedish mining company Boliden. In April, the two arranged the Efore ABO, which was the first follow-on offering of primary shares in almost two years.
Best M&A house is Enskilda Securities, for having the highest market share advising Finnish corporates and foreign companies in deals with Finnish corporates. Enskilda advised Boliden when it bought several of Outokumpu?s operations, as well as Swedish supplier of IT-related services company WM-Data on its public tender offer to acquire Finnish IT service provider Novo Group.
