Swedbank denies rumors of financial crisis

Dec 12, 2011
TBT Staff

RIGA - The Finance and Capital Markets Commission and Swedbank management rejected the rampant rumors of a financial crisis Sunday night, underlining that the bank is more than able to operate on a daily basis and in emergencies.

Swedbankspokesperson Kristine Jakubovska told LETA that the bank will respond with the best response – guaranteeing business as usual.

She called this weekend’s rumors that Swedbank has halted operations in Estonia – “out of touch with reality,” and that ATMs cannot issue cash in Sweden – “absurd.”

In his turn, Maris Mancinskis, CEO of Swedbank in Latvia said: “We currently see people asking on the Web and at branches about various rumors - some of which are simply not true, and some quite absurd - that the bank is not working in Estonia, that cash machines are not working in Sweden, which were just outright lies.

We take into account that people take any speculation about the financial market and banks extremely emotionally given both the recent closure of Krajbanka and the abundance of alarming headlines about Europe and the eurozone.

As a bank, we counter emotionality with rationality – we fill up cash machines and actively work at branches in order to provide people with the services they want.

Unbiased information and the bank’s actual day-to-day operations are what best dispel rumors.

In light of the fact that, affected by rumors, customers are much more active than normally on Sunday evenings, we have stepped up monitoring of cash machines to keep them full at all times. If any cash machine runs out of money, it is refilled within a couple of hours,” Mancinskis said.

As LETA reported earlier, this past Sunday, Swedbank clients withdrew more than 10 million lats (14 million euros) from the bank.

The longest lines at Swedbank ATMs were observed in Zemgaleprovince, Jelgava and Ventspils.

“I do not have any information about the sources of the rumors. We are waiting for the authorities to identify them,” said Mancinskis.

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