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Brexit won't curtail Swedish bank's UK growth

Brexit won’t curtail Swedish bank’s UK growth

(8 February 2017 – United Kingdom) The chief executive of one of Sweden’s largest banks, Svenska Handelsbanken, has said it will not allow Brexit to slow UK plans.

The bank’s CEO, Anders Bouvin says his strategy is proving especially effective in attracting small UK businesses looking for funding. And despite Brexit, Handelsbanken is adding branches in Britain.

“As our reputation grows in the U.K., business opportunities grow also,” Bouvin said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

“We can clearly see this even more when it comes to SMEs because our local branch-led model seems particularly attractive to SMEs.”

Britain is Handelsbanken’s biggest market outside of Sweden, delivering about 13 percent of revenue in 2016. The bank saw a 16 percent decline in its UK operating profit last quarter from a year earlier, after costs rose and income slipped. It opened nine more British branches, bringing its total in the country to 207.

“We’ve been gaining market share for a good number of years, and I can’t see that changing,” Bouvin said.

From the third quarter, Handelsbanken’s UK business saw a slight increase in net interest income. Net income from fees and commissions jumped 21 percent on a quarterly basis. The bank saw a 3 percent gain in loans to households, and its deposit base among British household jumped 10 percent. Loans to businesses rose 2 percent from the third quarter, according to its latest results.

Handelsbanken held capital equivalent to just over a quarter of its risk-weighted assets at the end of the fourth quarter. Common equity Tier 1 capital rose to 25.1 percent, compared with 24 percent in the third quarter and up from 21.2 percent a year earlier.

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