For 20 days, the ship Briggen Tre Kronor of Stockholm will sail around the Baltic sea stopping in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. On board are mentors and students from SEB's mentoring program, customers and SEB employees. The initiative aims to draw attention to SEB's work on sustainability issues, especially its dedication to a cleaner Baltic sea and support of future generations.

The shift from one economic growth engine to another is occurring more sluggishly than desired: with private consumption and capital spending not successfully filling the void emerging as the positive effects of fiscal stimulus programmes and inventory build-up fade away. In Tuesday’s Nordic Outlook, SEB’s economists forecast that in the OECD countries, economic growth is expected to end up at 2-2.3 per cent during the next couple of years, or somewhat below trend. They also peg the probability of a new global recession at 25 per cent. Here you can hear Håkan Frisén, head of Economic Research at SEB, talk about some key items in the Nordic Outlook report.

During the summer, SEB has appointed new country managers for its Trading and Capital Markets (TCM) business in all three Nordic countries outside Sweden. The move aims to strengthen the local management teams and reinforce the Nordic growth strategy applied by SEB.

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in cooperation with SEB Latvia has started a project competition programme “Brigāde”. The programme provides financial support to creative teams helping to promote economic growth.

CEBS published results from stress tests for banks in the European Union Friday. “These stress tests, like those performed by Swedish authorities, confirm SEB’s strong capitalisation,” says Anders Kvist, head of Group Treasury at SEB.

SEB's Housing Price Indicator in Latvia is continuing up and jumped sharply to a positive 15.1 reading in July, indicating that twice as many Latvians are now forecasting rising prices compared to those who believe prices will drop in the coming year. But now development may slow, warns SEB's expert.

SEB and Latvia’s largest sawmill company Vika Wood have signed a contract for about 7 million euros worth of financing for extending and upgrading production facilities. The project also involves financing from the European Union structure funds and in addition to the 7 million euro financing, SEB and Vika Wood signed a guarantee contract worth 1.05 million Latvian lats regarding the EU structure funds advance payment from the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia.

Fund management rating institute Standard & Poor’s has awarded SEB’s Asset Selection fund an AA-rating. This places the fund amongst the top-rated UCITS-funds using an absolute return strategy globally. The rating is testament to the long-term high return, the active risk control and the stability and competence in SEB’s global Quant Team, under the leadership of Hans-Olov Bornemann, which is managing the fund.