, Columnist
SBB’s Bondholders Suffer Another Confidence Drop
The Swedish property firm needs a combination of asset sales and sympathy from its bank lenders to survive.
SBB’s Stockholm headquarters.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
It scarcely seemed possible, but investors have gotten even more worried about Swedish landlord SBB. The poster child for the country’s property crisis has made itself increasingly hostage to fortune. It needs to pull harder on its remaining levers to survive.
Samhällsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB, as the company is formally known, is laboring under some 82 billion Swedish kronor ($7.6 billion) of debt. Second-quarter results showed the painful effect of leverage on falling real-estate valuations as the company’s net asset value fell some 40% compared with the end of March.