page_title: Handelsbanken
section_title: Founding as Stockholms Handelsbank
hierarchical_section_title: Handelsbanken / History / Founding as Stockholms Handelsbank
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Kungsträdgårdsgatan 4, Stockholm. Svenska handelsbankens huvudkontor.
context_page_description: Svenska Handelsbanken AB is a Swedish bank providing universal banking services including traditional corporate transactions, investment banking and trading as well as consumer banking including life insurance. Handelsbanken is one of the major banks in Sweden with over 460 branches.
  Since the mid 1990s Handelsbanken has been expanding its universal banking operations into the other Nordic countries, and also in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The largest of these is in Britain where, as of April 2016, it has 207 branches.
context_section_description: Stockholms Handelsbank ("Stockholm Commerce Bank") was created in early 1871 by several large corporations and leading Stockholm residents. Several of the initial owners had been active in Stockholms enskilda bank, the forerunner of SEB, which had opened in 1856 as the first private bank of Stockholm, and left that bank in April 1871 after a conflict. Handelsbanken began operating 1 July 1871 in rented space in the commercial and financial district in the central Old Town. The bank's first year was quite successful and soon, it was one of the city's leading financial institutions, functioning as a bank for businesses and also as an issuer of bonds. In 1873, the shares in Handelsbanken were listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
  In 1887, the bank entered into a crisis due to considerable losses, but was able to pull through. In 1893, the banking company of Louis Frænckel was fused with Stockholms Handelsbank, with Frænckel as the CEO. Under Frænckel's tenure, which lasted until his death in 1911, the bank was expanded with a notary department in 1896 and by a securities trading department in 1899. It also developed contacts with many leading foreign banks and financial institutions, which led to the buildup of trading activities in foreign currencies. The merge of the Julius Geber & Co banking company into Handelsbanken in 1906 contributed to its prominence in the Swedish foreign exchange market.
  From 1914 to 1917, Stockholm's Handelsbank bought several smaller Swedish regional banks, and was in a short time transformed from a purely Stockholm-based bank to a bank with a large number of branch offices (38 in 1914 and 143 in 1917) throughout Sweden, in particular central and northern Sweden. In 1918, new branches were opened in Gothenburg and Malmö to get better national coverage, and in 1919, a bank in southern Sweden was bought, which brought the number of branch offices to over 250. After this expansion, the name was changed to Svenska Handelsbanken ("Swedish Commerce Bank") on 15 November 1919.
caption: Handelsbanken Stockholm Headquarters.
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