HQ Bank was a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
finance and
banking
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Becau ...
corporation founded by
Sven Hagströmer and
Mats Qviberg (the last names of which form the H and the Q of the bank's name).
It began operations in 2006. Due to unmanageable risk and losses its
banking licence was revoked in 2010,
the bank's crash caused the loss of several billion
SEK and is one of the largest banking crashing in Sweden. Several board members were prosecuted for
fraud but were
acquitted
In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as criminal law is concerned. The finality of an acquittal is dependent on the jurisdiction. In some countries, such as the ...
.
History
Sven Hagströmer started a finance company in 1981, which became Hagströmer & Qviberg in 1989
when Mats Qviberg joined the company as a partner to Hagströmer.
Patrik Enblad was the
chief executive officer
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...
of the company and Mats Qviberg was
chairman of the board of directors.
Crash
In early 2010, HQ Bank closed down its trading activities, and realised a loss of 1.23 billion
SEK in its trading portfolio. Losses were primarily related to the bank's
derivatives trading, and since they vastly exceeded the bank's estimate of their portfolio's market risk (33 million SEK as of March 2010), this caught the attention of the Financial Supervisory Authority.
On 28 August 2010, the
Financial Supervisory Authority in Sweden revoked HQ's
banking licence, citing “major deficiencies” in trading operations, and applied to the Stockholm district court to have the bank to be forced into
liquidation.
In September 2010,
Carnegie Investment Bank
Carnegie Investment Bank AB is a Swedish financial services group with activities in securities brokerage, investment banking and private banking.
Founded in 1803, Carnegie is headquartered in Stockholm with offices across the Nordic region, a ...
bought HQ Bank for 268 million SEK.
Several board members were prosecuted for
fraud,
but were acquitted and found not to have intentionally reported false values. The company was given a SEK 480,000 penalty for accounting violations.
HQ Bank filed for
bankruptcy in December 2017 as it was unable to pay the SEK 240 million in legal fees for board members.
References
External links
Hagströmer & Qviberg subscribes to new ReadSoft stocks, as specified in contract from 2001IFS signs market-maker agreement with Hagströmer & Qviberg
{{Authority control
Defunct banks of Sweden
Investment banks
Companies based in Stockholm
Accounting scandals