Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken

In 1972, Stockholms Enskilda Bank (established in 1856 by André Oscar Wallenberg) and Skandinaviska Banken (established in 1864) merged to form SEB. Reasons for the merger included creating a bank better positioned to serve corporate clients and to fend off competition from major international banks. Through its predecessor, Stockholms Enskilda Bank, it claims to be the first bank in the world to employ women.

Stockholms Enskilda Bank was founded and run by the banking-involved Wallenberg family, and served as the lynchpin of their investment throughout most of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even today, its successor is amongst the most valuable of the Wallenbergs' various companies, alongside corporations like SKF, Atlas Copco and Ericsson, which it used to have major shareholdings in until Swedish legislation changes in the early twentieth century; these holdings were taken over by Investor AB, still primarily owned by the Wallenberg family today.

Skandinaviska Banken was founded as the Skandinaviska Kreditaktiebolaget, one of the projects of the Scandinavian movement. Thanks to the efforts of André Oscar Wallenberg, Skandinaviska Banken was initially founded and headquartered in Gothenburg rather than Copenhagen, contrary to the wishes of Danish financier Carl Frederik Tietgen; its headquarters was later moved to Stockholm. After its founding, the bank expanded throughout Scandinavia and eventually the rest of the Nordic region until its merger in 1972.

In 1997, SEB acquired the insurance company Trygg-Hansa, and in 1998, the company changed its Swedish-market logo and brand name from SE-Banken to SEB. At the end of that same year, SEB bought its first shares of the three Baltic banks Eesti Ühispank in Estonia, Latvijas Unibanka in Latvia and Vilniaus Bankas in Lithuania. This was the beginning of the bank's expansion into the Baltic states, a market in which it still has a large share.

In the early twenty-first century, SEB was initially refused a merger with Swedbank, a decision made by the European Union. In 2007 and 2008, SEB worked with the World Bank to develop the concept of green bonds, a form of bonds designed to accelerate the green transition. Later on, SEB Group would sell its banking operations in Germany and Ukraine as a result of weak profitability, the former to Spain's Banco Santander.

SEB Kort AB, a subsidiary of the SEB Group, was the franchisee of Diners Club International in the Nordic Countries until closing said service on 31 May 2019, citing increased competition and regulatory pressure in the Nordic payment card market.

Markets

The SEB Group's primary market is its home country, Sweden, where it is also the largest bank in the country, by both market capitalisation and total assets. It is also one of the largest Swedish banks by both employees and customers, with around 17,500 of the former and four and a half million of the latter.

Other major markets of SEB are the Baltic states, where Swedish banks are prominent. SEB is one of the largest banks in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, where Swedbank, another of Sweden's big four banks, is amongst its primary rivals. The SEB Group also has operations in most other Nordic countries, as well as larger foreign markets like Germany and the United Kingdom.

Business

In Sweden and the Baltic countries, SEB is a universal bank, offering financial advice and a wide range of financial services to all customer segments. In Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom the bank's operations have a strong focus on a full-service offering to corporate and institutional clients. SEB also has a presence in more than 20 locations worldwide including New York, São Paulo, London, Luxembourg, Geneva, Warsaw, Kyiv, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Delhi.

SEB serves 2,000 large corporations and 1,100 financial institutions, 400,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and some 4 million private individuals.