Union Bank of Finland (1862–1919) was instrumental in the creation of Suomen Yhdyspankki, while his father also played an important advisory role. He had initially proposed the establishment of a Finnish Agricultural Bank () to support the creation in 1860 of the () by purchasing its bonds, but that project was soon viewed as too narrow and a more autonomous design was eventually adopted. Suomen Yhdyspankki's founding general meeting was held in September 1861, and the bank began operations on . It was the largest
limited-liability company ever established in Finland by that time. Suomen Yhdyspankki issued its own
banknotes denominated in
Finnish markka between 1866 and 1918, alongside the
Bank of Finland.
Nordic Union Bank (1919–1975) In 1919, Suomen Yhdyspankki merged with (, est. 1873) and adopted the name Nordic Union Bank, abbreviated in Finnish as PYP. The Nordic Union Bank was the dominant bank for
Finland's Swedish-speaking community, whereas
Kansallis-Osake-Pankki (KOP) was its main competitor and peer among Finnish-speakers. The country's third-largest bank,
Helsingin Osakepankki (HOP), was more focused than PYP on the Swedish-speaking customer base. These linguistic divides, however, lost potency in the aftermath of
World War II. In 1922, PYP absorbed , a troubled small bank that had been established in 1896. In 1945, PYP absorbed . Its network reached a peak with 444 branches by 1987, and nearly 10,400 employees by 1988. 1988 was also the historic peak of SYP's profits, and when KOP and made an unsuccessful attempt at acquiring SYP with economist
Pentti Kouri as head of the merged entity. In 1990–1992, the group underwent restructuring. The listed group parent company was renamed Unitas, while the deposit-taking banking operations were transferred to a subsidiary that took the name Suomen Yhdyspankki. The group included other subsidiaries along side the "new" SYP, namely Stella (life insurance), Partita (investment company), and (property company). The group went into-loss-making operation in 1991 and remained unprofitable in 1992, 1993 and 1994. In 1993, SYP purchased 122 branches of the troubled (SSP), an entity established in 1992 to address the crisis of
Finnish Savings Banks and channel government assistance. In February 1995, it opened a branch in
Estonia, being the first foreign bank to do so.
Merger with KOP and the birth of Nordea In the wake of the
1990s Finnish banking crisis, Unitas eventually merged with its longtime competitor KOP in 1995 to create a new entity called
Merita Bank. KOP shareholders received 41.7 percent of capital in the new entity. Then in 1997, Merita Bank merged with Sweden's
Nordbanken to create
MeritaNordbanken, which subsequently also acquired Denmark's Unibank and Norway's Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse. In 2000, the resulting group was renamed as
Nordea. ==Leadership==