While it its shedding some jobs across the group and has spun off a Luxembourg-based private bank, the bank says it wants to build wealth management in its core Nordics region.

Nordea, which is moving headquarters to Finland from Sweden because of European Union rules and which recently sold its Luxembourg private bank to UBS, looks to build out its wealth management operations.

The bank has hired about 75 people over the past year to help run its $400 billion wealth unit, according to its head, Snorre Storset, Bloomberg reported this week. "Wealth management is a growth area which we have invested heavily in, not least asset management," he was quoted as saying. "We've hired quite a lot in the past year."

Nordea's wealth management chief says that "as long as we continue the positive development in our business, we can absolutely" keep hiring to build the unit. The newswire’s report said the wealth business employs about 3,600 people, 500 of whom are based outside the Nordic region. Staff numbers at the unit make up a little over 12 per cent of the total at Nordea, which is a slightly bigger proportion than in 2012.

In January, Nordea took a decision to focus more on its core Nordic region business, selling its Luxembourg-based private banking operations to UBS. As explained in a UBS statement at the time, “The decision follows a thorough strategic review of Nordea’s Private Banking International activities. The strategic review was part of the transformation of Nordea, with the aim to better manage risk, focus the business and deliver an even better bank for the clients. This led to the decision to concentrate Nordea´s private banking activities on the Nordics.”

Last year, executives at Nordea decided to move its headquarters to Finland after Sweden announced it intended to bring in a bank tax and because it wanted to be treated similarly to other lenders overseen by the European Central Bank. (Finland, unlike Sweden, is in the eurozone.)