Helaba opens Stockholm office

German landesbank Helaba has formally opened a representative office in Stockholm as it aims to capture more business in the Nordic region.

The bank announced in June that it had hired Swedish real estate banker Pontus Sundin, previously head of investment banking for commercial real estate at Nordea.

Last October, it said of its plans to open a presence in Stockholm: “An additional focus for the new representative office will be supporting medium-sized customers of the savings banks as well as Helaba’s German and Scandinavian corporate customers. Up to now, these customer groups have been served from Frankfurt.”

Helaba has lent in the Nordic real estate markets since 2006, with a focus on Norway and Finland. In June, it was one of seven banks which provided a €600 million financing to Finnish real estate investment company Sponda.

The new office is located on Stockholm’s Kungsgatan.

Herbert Hans Grüntker, CEO of Helaba, commented: “By opening the representative office in the economic centre of Northern Europe, Helaba takes a big step forward in cultivating the Scandinavian market. Our aim is to further expand our business with local and international investors in this attractive market for commercial real estate financing transactions.”

Outside Germany, Helaba now has branch offices in Paris, London and New York, plus representative offices in Madrid, Moscow, Shanghai and Singapore, as well as Stockholm.

During the first half of 2016, Helaba wrote €4.9 billion of new business through its real estate segment, a drop of 6 percent from the same period last year. The bank’s real estate unit made the largest contribution to its pre-tax profit during the first half of the year. The segment made €180 million, albeit down on €227 million in the previous period.