Skandia

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Skandia's logo

Skandia is a Swedish insurance company that was started in 1855. It has operations in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia. In 2003 the operations in North America, American Skandia, was acquired by Prudential Financial. It also operates an internet bank called Skandiabanken.

Skandia's largest operation, in terms of new business and profit, is the United Kingdom.

In 2005 South African/British financial services group Old Mutual launched a $6.5bn (£3.6bn) bid to acquire majority control of Skandia, which was met with resistance from some of Skandia's shareholders and directors. On February 3, 2006 Old Mutual completed its acquisition of Skandia, which was subsequently delisted from the Stockholm and London stock exchanges.[1]

[edit] Criticisms

Skandia's trademark and reputation has been severely hurt in recent years, mostly due to illegal internal affairs with the subsidiary Skandia Liv, and for having provided executives with subsidized apartments in Stockholm. The involved executives are among others Lars-Eric Petersson and Ulf Spång. It was discovered in late 2003 that executives at Skandia had embezzled 13 billion Swedish kronor. Subsequently, the board had to resign and in 2006, Lars-Eric Petersson was sentenced to two years in prison. The case has been appealed to a higher court.