Varma sold 10 percent of its Nordea pot – making deals worth 68 million euros

Employment pension insurer and major owner of Nordea Varma has sold four million Nordic share, the bank informs. CEO of Varma Risto Murto is a member of Nordea’s board.

The board decides on the company’s major strategic lines and appoints and dismisses the CEO.

Trades were made in several batches on Wednesday of this week. The average selling price per share was around EUR 16.95, which means the selling price of the whole pot was around EUR 67.8 million.

Nordea’s share closed at 16.84 euros on Wednesday. On Friday, the share rose 1.3 percent from Thursday, ending at 16.73 euros.

Varma is the largest Finnish owner of Nordea, the information service finds from Holdings. Varma owned 40,005,187 Nordea shares at the end of January, so the sold shares correspond to approximately 10 percent of Varma’s ownership.

According to Holdings, Varma was Nordea’s 10th largest owner at the end of January. The next largest owner was Nordea through its funds with approximately 35.7 million shares.

Employment pension insurers take care of the pension security of employees and entrepreneurs in the private sector. There are four insurers in Finland, of which Varma is the largest. Others are Ilmarinen, How much and Veritas.

Pension funds collect employee pension contributions from employers. Insurers pay pensions, but also invest money in forward-looking assets to pay future pensions.