Swedbank sells shares in card processing company

Press Release February 23, 2007

Swedbank sells shares in card processing company

Swedbank is selling its 21% stake in the Swedish card processing company CEKAB. Swedbank owns CEKAB together with Nordea (39%), Svenska Handelsbanken (37%) and Danske Bank (3%). All the banks are selling their stakes at the same time to the Norwegian company EDB Business Partner for a total price of SEK 257 million. EDB Business Partner will thereby own the entire company. 

Swedbank's capital gain is estimated at SEK 40 million. The sale will be finalized during the first half of 2007.

EDB will secure continuity in the growing card business. CEKAB was founded in 1989 to build a new, unified infrastructure needed at the time. As the card business has matured, a clearer delegation of responsibilities between infrastructure vendors and the banks is preferred. 

Lenner & Partners has served as financial adviser. The sale is subject to the approval of competition authorities.


For further information: 
Jan-Olof Brunila, Head of Group Card Services, phone: +46 8 708 87 71 55 
Henrik Kolga, Head of Communications, Swedbank, phone +46 70 811 13 15




Swedbank is a leading Nordic-Baltic banking group with 8.9 million retail customers and 459,000 corporate customers in Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. In Sweden the group has more than 470 branches, with another 290 branches in the Baltic countries. The group is also present in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Kaliningrad, Kiev, Luxembourg, Marbella, Moscow, New York, Oslo, Shanghai, St. Petersburg and Tokyo. As of December 2006 the group had total assets of SEK 1,400 billion and approximately 17,000 employees. For more information about Swedbank, please visit www.swedbank.com.