OREANDA-NEWS. January 12, 2011. The total value of the assets in the Eastern Europe share funds managed by SEB’s Tallinn-based team has surpassed 1.5 billion euros.

 “SEB is the only large commercial bank in the Nordic region with an investment team that’s actually based in the Baltic States,” explained Sven Kunsing, a member of the Management Board of SEB Asset Management. “The Nordic banks that are in the leading market positions in the Baltic States have been blamed for the low levels of activity on the local securities markets. But I’m happy to report that the Baltic investments managed by our team in Tallinn currently amount to around 38 million euros, 20 million of which is in Estonia.”

The largest of the five Eastern Europe funds managed from Estonia is the SEB Osteuropafond, which is registered in Sweden and aimed at the Swedish market. This is followed by the Luxembourg registered SEB Russia Fund, the SEB Eastern Europe Small Cap Fund and the SEB Eastern Europe Ex Russia Fund. The volume of these four funds has grown by more than 60% during the last year, primarily due to increased interest among professional investors from abroad. The smallest fund in the group, designed for local investors, is the SEB Kasvufond. Kunsing says that the Baltic markets were some of the strongest in Eastern Europe in 2010 and that there can be no doubt that this played a role in the relative and absolute yield of SEB’s funds. “We would gladly invest more in the local market, but we’re being prevented from doing so mostly by the lack of liquidity on the market, and the fact that Baltic shares don’t form part of the most common benchmark indexes in Eastern Europe.”

In addition to the funds mentioned above, SEB Asset Management manages 545 million euros in assets from local pension and other funds and its client portfolios, making SEB the biggest asset manager in the Baltic States, with a total volume of managed assets of more than 2 billion euros.