Sweden

Swedish landlord Oscar Properties should enter bankruptcy proceedings after failing to uphold a settlement agreement with a creditor, according to a statement, Bloomberg News reported. The creditor in question is Brf Innovationen, a housing cooperative that owns one of the two flagship residential towers in Stockholm built by Oscar Properties. Oscar Properties plans to refute the claim. “The board is continuously evaluating the options to ensure the continued operations of the company, and is in discussions with Brf Innovationen and other creditors,” it said.

Swedish bankruptcies jumped 29% in 2023 to the highest level since the 1990s, when the bursting of a property bubble crippled the Nordic nation’s banking system, Bloomberg News reported. This may just be the tip of the iceberg in the wake of persistently high inflation and interest rates, according to UC, a credit reference agency that compiled the data. In December, bankruptcies increased overall by 23% from a year earlier, it said.

Hovding AB, a Swedish company that has made headlines for the first mass-market bicycle airbag helmet, filed for bankruptcy on Thursday after regulators stopped the sales of its main product, Bloomberg News reported. The decision comes after the Swedish Consumer Agency forced a complete halt of all sales of the Hovding 3 helmet on Dec. 15, due to concerns that it wouldn’t inflate properly on impact.

Sweden’s core inflation hit the lowest level since May last year, reinforcing a brighter view on price increases after the country’s central bank halted an 18-month campaign of interest-rate hikes last month, Bloomberg News reported. Prices excluding energy and interest-rate changes rose by 5.4% from a year earlier, a release from Statistics Sweden showed Thursday. That was clearly lower than the 5.9% expected by both the Riksbank and economists in a Bloomberg survey.

Sweden-based Nilar International AB filed for insolvency on Dec. 1 and has appointed Lars Nylund, an attorney for Advokatfirman Fylgia, as trustee in the bankruptcy, PV-Magazine.com reported. “The trustee is continuing the company’s operations with the aim of finding a new owner for the business,” the company said on its website.

Airline SAS AB received approval from a bankruptcy court in New York for a $1.2 billion rescue package that will see Air France-KLM and private equity firm Castlelake LP become owners in the Scandinavian flag-carrier, Bloomberg News reported. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022, saying it faced a significant decline in passenger demand during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as a series of pilot strikes and intense competition from low cost air carriers.

Swedish landlord SBB’s offer to buy back some of its bonds at steep discounts may be tantamount to a default, according to a statement from S&P Global Ratings, Bloomberg News reported. The ratings agency placed Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB, as it is otherwise known, on watch for a possible downgrade to selective default in a statement Friday. S&P said it would be able to assess further once the final results of the buyback were published.

Embattled Swedish landlord SBB is facing an inflection point after one of its creditors demanded its money back, the first time such a written notice has been given, Bloomberg News reported. Stockholm-based Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB — as the firm is officially known — has been at the center of Sweden’s property crisis as landlords scramble to find ways to refinance billions of dollars of bonds amassed in the cheap-money era. Now one of those bondholders has run out of patience, saying repayment is needed on the grounds SBB breached a key term in its debt.

Swedish bankruptcies increased to their highest level for the month of October since records began in 1999, according to data compiled by collection agency Creditsafe, Bloomberg News reported. During the month, 795 limited companies went bankrupt, marking an increase of 18% from October last year and 77% compared to the same month in 2021. “We have not been anywhere near such high levels before for the month of October,” said Managing Director Henrik Jacobsson of Creditsafe i Sverige AB in a statement on Wednesday. Higher levels have previously been recorded for other months.