Luminor completes its banks’ cross-border merger

2019-01-02

Starting from 2 January 2019, Luminor will continue its operations in all Baltic countries through the Estonian registered bank and its branches in Latvia and Lithuania. The new simplified structure and governance model enables the bank faster decision making, provides excellent cross-border collaboration opportunities and improves efficiency.

“Since the day Luminor was established, we have been working on our post-merger activities, including legal changes that foresee a full integration of the Baltic banks. We have had a close and constructive collaboration with regulators to complete this critical step on schedule,” says the CEO of Luminor group, Erkki Raasuke. The new legal setup will enable Luminor to decrease its governance complexity as well as to develop and strengthen the co-operation and synergy within the whole Luminor group. “The step was necessary to support our ambition for building a new-generation financial services provider for Baltic companies and entrepreneurial people,” Raasuke added.

As of 2 January 2019, after completion of the merger, Luminor will have a new organizational set up, a new governance structure and new members of management bodies. Erkki Raasuke will continue as Luminor ’s CEO and Nils Melngailis will lead the supervisory board. Kerli Gabrilovica and Andrius Načajus will continue leading the Luminor Latvia and Luminor Lithuania branches.

The new governance structure can be found here

Luminor will focus on improvements in many areas, including products and customer offerings, customer centricity, digital capabilities and teaming up with third-party service providers.

About the cross-border merger

The cross-border merger agreement was signed on 29 March 2018, and Luminor received the final merger approval from the European Central Bank on 28 June 2018. The cross-border merger, initiated 1 October 2017, is the final stage of post-merger activities that combine DNB´s and Nordea´s Baltic operations.

After the completion of the merger, all assets, rights and liabilities of Luminor Latvia and Luminor Lithuania were transferred to Luminor Bank AS in Estonia. The bank will continue the same activities in Latvia and Lithuania through its locally established branches. Daily operations and customer service will continue as usual.

Starting from 2 January 2019, the deposits and financial instruments of the depositors and investment services clients of Luminor Bank AS Latvian branch and Luminor Bank AS Lithuanian branch will be guaranteed by the deposit guarantee and investor protection scheme established and operated by the Estonian Guarantee Fund.

The pension depository function in Latvia and Lithuania will be performed by Luminor Bank AS Latvian and Lithuanian branches.

Luminor is the third largest bank and financial services provider in the Baltics, with a 16% market share in deposits and 22% in lending. We have around one million customers and 3000 working professionals throughout the Baltics. Luminor is capitalized at 17.3% Common Equity Tier 1 capital in the amount of EUR 1.8 billion. Moody´s Investor Service has appointed Luminor a first-time deposits rating of Baa1 with a stable outlook. The Luminor unsecured inaugural bond with a maturity of three years was issued in October 2018 and is listed on the Irish Euronext Dublin.