Nordea is a leading financial institution in the Nordic region, which benefits from strong credit ratings (Aa2/AA-/AA-). Nordea Hypotek's main source of covered bond funding is the SEK denominated benchmark market. Nordea did not issue any euro-denominated covered bonds in 2009 and this was the first covered bond from the Nordic region in 2010. The purpose of this transaction was to take advantage of the increasingly favourable market conditions for covered bonds and to extend beyond the SEK denominated benchmark curve which reaches out to 5 years.