Stockholm: Shareholders in Nordea, the Nordic region’s biggest bank, voted overwhelmingly in favour of relocating the bank’s headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki, which is in the eurozone and will put the bank under the European banking union. A total of 97 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of the move at the bank’s annual general meeting in Stockholm, Nordea said.
“If everything goes as planned, and if the relevant authorities in the two countries give their approval, then we expect the move to be completed by October 1, 2018,” spokesman Claes Eliasson said.
Nordea announced in September 2017 that it wanted to leave Stockholm after the Swedish government announced it would raise by almost 40 per cent a special bank tax designed to shield the country from a future financial crisis. Sweden is not in the euro zone, and Nordea wants to put itself “on a par with its European peers”, the bank’s chairman of the board, Bjorn Wahlroos, argued in announcing the move. — AFP
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