“We have grown quite significantly over the past three years and have come to a point where it’s realistic to consider opening a second office. But I wouldn’t want to do it unless we can put at least two to three people on the ground, which I feel is much more rewarding,” said Asgeir Thordarson, head of the Nordic region at the firm.

Its second Nordic office will be either in Copenhagen or Helsinki. Mr Thordarson said it make sense to open an office in Denmark, which is the second largest market, but that language was a reason to also consider Finland. The firm already has one of the largest offices out of international firms in the Nordic region and will continue to add to its business as long as its growth continues. Over the long term, it predicts boosting its Nordic staff from 14 to 25 members.

Although he is confident another office will help the business, Mr Thordarson does not believe the firm has lost out on any clients by not being based in each Nordic country.

“It brings you a bit more local flavour than supporting clients from Stockholm,” he said.

Mr Thordarson said being an alpha manager has helped business growth over the past three years.

“The low return environment has made institutional investors to increasingly look for diverse and reliable sources of alpha,” he said.

• The new SAF-LO agreement, the pension plan for Swedish blue-collar workers, has relaunched its tender process. It intends to award 10 mandates for both a low-risk option and a higher-risk fund option and will also appoint a manager for the default option. The tender process originally started last year, but was reportedly cancelled due to dissatisfaction with the offers. The tender process will continue during the autumn and the mandates are expected to be in place by January 1 2009.  A total of 15 companies handed in applications last year for the more high-risk products before the last tender process was cancelled. Fora, the company managing the tender process, has declared that selected products will fulfill three criteria: low costs, ability to get high returns, and financial stability of competing firms.
  
  
• Nordea predicts a gloomy outlook for the Baltic region, but  is still optimistic about the prospects in Russia and Poland. While it expects the preconditions for exports to the Baltic region to become weaker, the opposite is expected from Russia and Poland. The firm believes that export opportunities have never been better because  of the rapid increase in purchasing power, which will create new opportunities for Nordic companies. “Until recently, the Baltic countries were star performers in terms of growth among the EU countries. However, the economic outlook deteriorated in all the countries in early 2008 and the adjustment towards slower growth has started. In Estonia and Latvia, the slowdown seems to be much faster than we previously expected,” said Anssi Rantala, Nordea's expert on economic developments in the Baltic countries and Russia.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend