Brett Girard, CPA, CA, CFA Svenska Handelsbanken SVNLY-OTC HOLD Jan 13, 2020

In his opinion, this is the best run bank in all of Europe. Nordics have the highest capital adequacy ratio of any banks globally. They went through a financial crisis in the 90s, and the regulator made them bring up their capital adequacy ratios to very high levels, so all we have to do is worry about them growing their business. This bank has a very strong network in Sweden, but has a good growth platform in the UK and Holland.

He owns 3 banks. Toronto Dominion (TD-T) for North America, Svenska for Europe, and HDFC (HDB-N) for India. This avoids correlation risk. Svenska, is a Swedish bank and a little different in that head office doesn't make the decisions, the branch manager does. They have a steeple effect, where if you climb the steeple, everything you can see in 360° is your market. Very conservatively run. The dividend has been rising at roughly 10%-15%. Trading roughly 13.5X earnings. Dividend yield of 4.32%. (Analysts' price target is 117.73 SEK.)

It pays a 5.5% dividend, so you don't need much share growth. They have the best credit rating in Europe, mostly exposed to northern Europe, not Italy, Spain and Greece. Conservative balance sheet. The central bank in Sweden raised rates, which raised the stock price, but like Canada, Sweden's economy relies heavily on real estate. So, there could be write-downs in the future. He'll stick with this.

Best of the Nordic banks. Interesting way for Canadians to get exposure beyond NA. Also, it's not going to be correlated to a potential tariff war between Canada and the US.