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 | News | |
 Interview with Eric Chèvre, Senior Country Officer, Nordic countries, Calyon
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A strong and longstanding presence with corporate clients, more recent relationships with financial institutions, nascent with Private Equity funds
Calyon's first local operations in the Nordic region date back to 1982. We created a subsidiary with a local bank, which was then turned into a Calyon branch. After having set up operations in Norway, we established a presence in Sweden in 1986 where we were one of the first foreign banks to be granted an operating license.
We recently celebrated our 20 years in Sweden with our clients, and were named Sweden's "French Company of the year" for 2006.
Over the years, Calyon has developed very solid relationships with companies in Finland and Sweden and now has 55 corporate clients in the region, mainly in those two countries, and to a lesser extent, in Norway and Denmark.
We have especially close relationships with some six major Nordic groups that count us among their core foreign banking groups.
As the Nordic institutional markets have opened up we have also developed relationships with local financial institutions, an initiative I stepped up on arriving here in 2004.
We currently have a client base that is well balanced between corporate accounts and financial institutions.
However, we still need to make inroads into an important segment of the market – the Nordic Private Equity funds – very active in the Nordic region, and in Europe as a whole. We will be focusing our sales efforts towards this clientele over the next two years.
A sales organisation well adapted to the regional market
Calyon operates in the four Nordic countries, each of which has strong specific local characteristics. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark (which we cover from Stockholm) all have their own particular culture, languages and set of relations with the European Community. In fact, since Finland is the only country among them to have adopted the euro, we conduct our business in four currencies as well.
This has led us to develop a sales approach combining strong product expertise and nationalites. Our Senior Bankers are nationals of three different Nordic countries: they are Swedes in Sweden and Finns only in Finland and we have a Sweden-based Norwegian Senior Banker to deal with financial institutions.
The sales people in our trading room are also from the various Nordic countries.
Client coverage is organised as follows: for financial institutions, we have two bankers in Sweden and one in Finland. For corporate clients, we have two bankers in Finland including the head of the branch and five in Sweden, including two Senior Bankers.
We have also worked to align client coverage with business line expertise and our Senior Bankers are all experienced in capital markets.
Our product range
1. Capital markets activities- Interest rates and forex derivatives, mostly though strutured products solutions
- Equity derivatives : we work increasingly our large corporate clients - in the risk advisory and investment product areas. We can offer a variety of underlying assets and equity derivatives to hedge the various risks imbedded in their pension funds
- Bond origination: we are active in the area, but intend to increase our presence across the board, with the support of our teams in London, from traditional bonds issues to high yield bonds, from public bonds to private placements etc.
A new market for covered bonds has just opened in Finland, Sweden should follow: Calyon will be a forerunner in this business.
2. Structured finance
We are active in trade finance, export finance, and have a good practice in forfaiting. We are also in a position to offer all forms of structured finance, including leases, in connection with our central teams in Paris : in the Islamic Finance area, we are currently co-developing a range of sharia compliant export finance solutions.
3. Global Investment Banking
We have a good track record in global investment banking and intend to continue to add to our achievements. The current privatisation programme conducted in Sweden is a good opportunity to offer our expertise.
For example, in 2005, Calyon was the sole mandated advisor to Hexagon for its €1 billion acquisition of Leica Geosystems and in March 2006 was the only international bank involved in Ahlström's €200 million IPO.
With regard to financial institutions, we boast a number of successful operations in 2006. We managed more than 20 issues of retail structured products (public offers or private placements) through various local distributions. In 2007, our plans call for focusing more on asset managers and pension funds, while broadening even more the geographical scope of our offer for structured notes.
Our strengths: product expertise, international cross-selling opportunities and local presence
There is no doubt that our longstanding banking relationships with the region's corporate clients, and our local know-how in capital markets and structured finance remain the pillars of our operations in the Nordic region. In addition, we have built up a clientele that goes beyond the size of our local operations.
Thankfully, when dealing with Calyon, Volvo, Electrolux, Ericsson and Nokia do not only take into consideration our staff of 45 in Sweden and 15 in Finland. They know Calyon's overall size and the services we are capable of providing as a global bank with operations in 55 countries and the backing of Crédit Agricole. The product and services we provide are truly global, and we present a seamless and consistent offer to our customers, in all business lines across all of Calyon's countries of operations.
International cross-selling has come naturally to us for many years. Nordic economies have traditionally been open to the outside world and we are a preferred supplier of banking services for our large corporate clients.
We thus cater to the banking needs of our clients, not only in Sweden and Finland, but also in Ukraine, China, Thailand, Brazil, Egypt, Morocco, India, Singapore,...
We also do a great deal of internal cross-selling: for example, our trading room sales people trade exchange contacts to offer hybrid products (credit/equity) to our clients.
We are one of the only foreign banks with a local trading room, which our clients appreciate greatly, and we handle not only cash management products but also high value-added products. Our product capabilities correspond closely to our clients' needs; furthermore, our proximity makes us a worthy advisor to our clients, with whom we often maintain friendly relationships.
Main references
- August 2006 - Calyon, MLA and Finnvera Agent in an Export Credit to Megafon, Russia
- July 2006 - Calyon, Arranger for a 5-year highly structured medium term financing to Metro
- May 2006 - Calyon, MLA in the refinancing and financing to Korsnäs for the acquisition of Frövi
- March 2006 - Calyon, Co-Lead Manager in IPO of Ahlström Finland
- 2005 - Calyon, Exclusive Financial Advisor to Hexagon AB in its unsolicited bid to take over Leica Geosyste
Active shipping unit in Oslo | |
A fully dedicated staff of five specialists has been providing for more than 20 years local services focusing on structuration, arrangement and syndication of shipping loans for Scandinavian ship owners. Oslo based Shipping office has developed close relationship with Nordic clients and is currently financing circa 300 vessels.
The Oslo unit is an integral part of Calyon's Ship Financing division which has been active for more than 30 years and is organised as a global business line. Division staff in Paris, London, Oslo, Piraeus and Hong Kong provide a comprehensive range of financing products and services for international ship owners, including arrangement and underwriting of mortgage loans, export credits, French and UK Tax Leases, and a full range of interest rate, forex and commodities derivatives.
As at year-end 2006, Calyon ShipFinance global portfolio exceeds USD 11 billion financing a modern, diversified fleet of more than 1,000 vessels.
CA Cheuvreux, a leading player in the region's brokerage activities | |
As part of its multi-local development, Cheuvreux established its Stockholm base in 1997. Cheuvreux Nordic currently comprises 45 employees in offices in Stockholm and London.
Its team of 12 analysts actively covers over 120 listed companies in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, representing 85% of this region's market capitalisation. Cheuvreux is ranked No. 4 for its research on Nordic equities (Thomson Extel Survey 2006 & Greenwich Associates 2006 – European investors).
Clients also value the expertise and know-how of Cheuvreux Nordic's sales team.
Moreover, Cheuvreux organised 90 roadshows on Nordic stocks in 2005, enabling its European and US institutional clients to meet with the management of listed companies in the region.
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