Swedbank Arena becomes Friends Arena

Swedbank has decided to donate the naming rights Swedbank Arena to the organisation Friends, whose mission is to prevent bullying. The arena will be renamed Friends Arena. With the unique decision, Swedbank continues its long-term youth effort and develops the bank’s social engagement.

In 2007 Swedbank bought with the support by the Savings Foundations, the naming rights to the national arena in Solna. The arena was named Swedbank Arena following on the bank’s name change from Föreningssparbanken to Swedbank. Since then, Swedbank has a new vision and the bank’s view on sponsoring and marketing has changed. Swedbank’s sponsor strategy today aims at supporting youth and social engagement –goals which are fully supported by the name change.

–With the decision to donate the name to Friends we do something unique. From what we know, there’s currently no other company (in the world) that has given away the naming rights to an arena to a non-profit organization. I’m glad to present this new solution with Friends Arena. For us at Swedbank, it is important to take responsibility for the future – our youth – and at the same time make a contribution to society, Swedbank’s CEO Michael Wolf commented.

He added:
– It’s become clear throughout the work process that we don’t need more signs with our name on, instead we want to increase our social engagement. We have now cooperated with Friends for six years and we are full of admiration for what Friends have achieved in their work to ensure that more children can go to school without fear for being bullied.

For Friends, the cooperation means increased possibilities to spread its work against bullying.

– This is a fantastic opportunity for us to reach out even further in our important work and our vision; a society where children and young people grow up safe and equal. We will get new channels and hopefully be able to multiply our efforts against bullying through the new cooperation, commented Friends’ founder and Chairman Sara Damber.

Michael Wolf concluded:
- I’m proud that we have reached this agreement after almost one and a half years of discussion. It shows new ways as for what companies can achieve through social engagement. Friends Arena will be able to make a difference.

Besides Friends Arena, Swedbank is already involved in a number of youth efforts such as the projects Young Job, Young Economy and more.

For furhter information:
Thomas Backteman, Head of Corporate Affairs, Swedbank, phone: +46 708 311 166
Anna Sundblad, Press Manager, Swedbank, phone: +46 70 321 39 95

Swedbank promotes a sound and sustainable financial situation for the many people, households and companies. Our vision is to contribute to a development “Beyond Financial Growth”. As a leading bank in the home markets Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Swedbank offers a wide range of financial services and products. Swedbank has 9.7 million retail customers and around 634,000 corporate customers and organizations with 317 branches in Sweden and over 200 branches in the Baltic countries. The group is also present in other Nordic countries, the U.S., China, Russia and Ukraine. As of 31 December, 2011 the group had total assets of SEK 1,857 billion. Read more at www.swedbank.com