Swedbank Arena becomes Friends Arena

Swedbank Arena becomes Friends Arena

Swedbank has decided to donate the naming rights Swedbank Arena to the
organisation Friends, whose mission is to prevent bullying. The arena will be
renamed Friends Arena. With the unique decision, Swedbank continues its
long-term youth effort and develops the bank’s social engagement.

In 2007 Swedbank bought with the support by the Savings Foundations, the naming
rights to the national arena in Solna. The arena was named Swedbank Arena
following on the bank’s name change from Föreningssparbanken to Swedbank. Since
then, Swedbank has a new vision and the bank’s view on sponsoring and marketing
has changed. Swedbank’s sponsor strategy today aims at supporting youth and
social engagement –goals which are fully supported by the name change.

–With the decision to donate the name to Friends we do something unique. From
what we know, there’s currently no other company (in the world) that has given
away the naming rights to an arena to a non-profit organization. I’m glad to
present this new solution with Friends Arena. For us at Swedbank, it is
important to take responsibility for the future – our youth – and at the same
time make a contribution to society, Swedbank’s CEO Michael Wolf commented.
He added:
– It’s become clear throughout the work process that we don’t need more signs
with our name on, instead we want to increase our social engagement. We have now
cooperated with Friends for six years and we are full of admiration for what
Friends have achieved in their work to ensure that more children can go to
school without fear for being bullied.

For Friends, the cooperation means increased possibilities to spread its work
against bullying.
– This is a fantastic opportunity for us to reach out even further in our
important work and our vision; a society where children and young people grow up
safe and equal. We will get new channels and hopefully be able to multiply our
efforts against bullying through the new cooperation, commented Friends’ founder
and Chairman Sara Damber.

Michael Wolf concluded:
- I’m proud that we have reached this agreement after almost one and a half
years of discussion. It shows new ways as for what companies can achieve through
social engagement. Friends Arena will be able to make a difference.

Besides Friends Arena, Swedbank is already involved in a number of youth efforts
such as the projects Young Job, Young Economy and more.

For furhter information:
Thomas Backteman, Head of Corporate Affairs, Swedbank, phone: +46 708 311 166
Anna Sundblad, Press Manager, Swedbank, phone: +46 70 321 39 95

 

Swedbank promotes a sound and sustainable financial situation for the many
people, households and companies. Our vision is to contribute to a development
“Beyond Financial Growth”. As a leading bank in the home markets Sweden,
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Swedbank offers a wide range of financial
services and products. Swedbank has 9.7 million retail customers and around
634,000 corporate customers and organizations with 317 branches in Sweden and
over 200 branches in the Baltic countries. The group is also present in other
Nordic countries, the U.S., China, Russia and Ukraine. As of 31 December, 2011
the group had total assets of SEK 1,857 billion. Read more at www.swedbank.com