Jittery Investors Dump Shares Of Nordic Banks After Reports Of FBI Investigation

A report by a major Swedish newspaper triggered a selloff by investors of shares in a trio of Nordic banks, puzzling analysts since the revelations appear to be based on criminal probes publicly disclosed months and even years ago.

The stock price of Swedbank AB, Danske Bank A/S and SEB AB, dropped by as much as 9.6 percent, 4.2 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively, after the newspaper, Dagens Industri, reported the FBI, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice and the federal prosecutor for New York, are investigating allegations of money laundering and fraud, according to Bloomberg.

The fierce reaction by investors to the report helped push all three banks “to the bottom of the Bloomberg index of European financial stocks,” the news service reported.

However, spokespersons for the three Nordic banks pushed back, characterizing the newspaper’s story as old news.

In particular, Danske and SEB were already publicly known to be the subject of money laundering probes, while Denmark’s Danske “admitted more than two years ago that its Estonian unit was at the heart of one of Europe’s biggest dirty money scandals,” Bloomberg noted.

All three banks, in statements or interviews with the news service, said they had either been in touch with U.S. investigators, as in the case of SEB, or have been engaged in ongoing discussions with federal authorities.

Stefan Singh Kailay, a spokesman for Danske, told Bloomberg “it is known that we are being investigated by authorities in Denmark, the U.S., Estonia and France, and we continue to be in close dialogue with them all.” He said Danske is “unable to estimate any potential outcome of these dialogues,” which he said includes the “timing.”

In particular, Danske has previously acknowledged being the subject of investigations by authorities in the U.S. and Europe, with the probes centered on $243 million in suspicious transactions that passed through its Estonian banking unit.