Get a Handel on it

8 February 2017 By Dominic Elliott

The Swedish lender posted a 23 pct year-on-year drop in fourth-quarter earnings after a $40 mln charge on a loan made by its Danish business. Handelsbanken boasts its customers are happy. If some are getting easy credit, investors may wish they were less so.

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Swedish lender Handelsbanken on Feb. 8 reported a 23 percent year-on-year decline in fourth-quarter earnings to 3.4 billion Swedish crowns ($380 million), as loan losses jumped by three quarters.

Loan loss charges rose to 832 million Swedish crowns in the fourth quarter from 475 million crowns in the same period a year ago.

"This increase was entirely attributable to a single exposure; the underlying credit quality remained stable," the bank said in its report.

The increase was most visible in Handelsbanken's Danish business, where a fourth-quarter charge of 478 million Swedish crowns took net loan losses to 716 million crowns for the whole of 2016.

By 0943 GMT, shares in Handelsbanken were trading at 128.30 crowns, down 4 percent from the previous day's close.

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