The head of Scandinavian airline SAS, opens new tab criticised the European Commission on Monday for taking a "cautious" approach to consolidation in the industry at a time when the EU is adding to the cost of flying, Reuters reported. Anko van der Werff, whose long-struggling carrier is the largest in Scandinavia, listed the European Union's flagship scheme to help curb greenhouse gas emissions as among the reasons why the EU "clearly wants flying to be more expensive".

Scandinavian airline SAS AB will cancel and redeem all of its common shares and commercial hybrid bonds when it emerges from chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. around June, Bloomberg News reported. “SAS reiterates its expectation that there will be only a modest recovery for general unsecured creditors, no recovery for subordinated creditors and no value for SAS AB’s existing shareholders,” the carrier said in a statement released at 11 p.m. Stockholm time on Tuesday.

The world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund is going after the now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank, its management and the Wall Street advisers that aided its rise, the Wall Street Journal reported. Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s $1.5 trillion wealth fund, and other former SVB shareholders attacked the failed bank in a legal filing late Tuesday. The filing accused SVB and its executives of concealing the lender’s ailing health from public view, while also ignoring warnings about risks from rising interest rates.

The volume of commercial property transactions in the Nordic region fell to the lowest level in a decade last year, in an ominous sign for landlords needing to offload assets to bolster their finances, Bloomberg News reported. In 2023, only €20 billion ($21.9 billion) of properties traded hands in the region, property adviser Colliers International Group Inc said in an emailed statement. Activity tumbled by 64% in Finland compared with a year earlier, while volumes in Norway, Sweden and Denmark slumped by slightly more than half.

Norway's $1.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, said on Friday it has been appointed by a U.S. court to co-lead an ongoing U.S. securities class action relating to the now-bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Reuters reported. SVB's collapse in March was the trigger for the worst banking shock since the 2008 global financial crisis, sending bank stocks globally on a wild ride.

The Nordic construction industry is facing further challenges as two of the region’s largest builders, YIT Oyj and Skanska AB, report difficulties in selling properties, Bloomberg News reported. YIT Oyj has seen a 30% increase in completed unsold apartments in the third quarter, while Skanska AB experienced a more than 50% decline in quarterly profit due to a weak market outlook in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. This indicates a worsening situation for the construction industry in the Nordic region.

A U.S. bankruptcy court judge granted SAS AB’s request to speed the process of paying $3 million to advisers of the Scandinavian airline’s investor group, keeping its restructuring on track over opposition from creditor Apollo Global Management Inc., Bloomberg News reported. Judge Michael E. Wiles set an Oct. 12 hearing on a motion to expedite reimbursement to advisers to the group led by Air France-KLM and Castlelake LP, who are set to take control of SAS as it exits from chapter 11 protection.

Purecod has entered bankruptcy proceedings and is in the middle of a major restructuring, according to the company’s CEO, Eirik Jørs, SeafoodSource.com reported. Founded in 2020, Sykkylven, Norway-based Purecod was granted a permit to farm a maximum of 3,120 metric tons standing biomass of Atlantic cod at sea in closed pens at Røneset, Storfjorden, Norway from the Møre and Romsdal county municipality in March 2022. Its permits remain active, though the company never began farming fish. Now, the company is four weeks into the first phase of what Jørs described as a two-step bankruptcy process.

Norway’s central bank raised borrowing costs to the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis and signaled it still plans another quarter-point hike in the current tightening cycle, Bloomberg News reported. Norges Bank lifted its key deposit rate on Thursday by 25 basis points to 4%, the 12th increase since September 2021, as forecast by all analysts in a Bloomberg survey. It said the rate “will most likely be raised further in September,” with Governor Ida Wolden Bache keeping the door open for further hikes, depending on incoming data.