Stockholm / Sweden

Stockholm is the capital of the Kingdom of Sweden and Helsinki is the capital of the Republic of Finland. The two neighboring countries have had a close relationship throughout history as well as with the other Nordic countries: Norway, Denmark and Iceland. These five countries have had an economic and political collaboration for many years with a completely free labor market among the Nordic countries for half a century prior to the establishment of the European Union.

The Swedish, Danish and Norwegian languages are all rather similar, while Finnish belongs to a different language family. However, Finland is a bilingual country with both Finnish and Swedish as its official languages.

Despite the long friendship, there exists a keen rivalry between Sweden and Finland in many industrial fields. A well-known example is Sweden's Ericsson competing with Finland's Nokia in the telecommunication field. This is also evident in many other fields such as forestry, pulp and paper, mining and shipbuilding industries. However, many large Swedish and Finnish corporations have recently merged in order to increase their competitiveness in the European market and, in many cases, it has become difficult to say if a particular company is Swedish or Finnish.

The Stockholm and Helsinki Offices have undergone dramatic changes following the establishment of Marubeni Europe plc in 1999. From initially having 36 employees, the offices now employ 10 people. This reduction in personnel is mainly due to: Marubeni establishing a separate company to handle the pulp and paper business in Europe; support for the fully owned subsidiaries, Nissan Sverige AB in Sweden and Nissan Norge AS in Norway being transferred to Marubeni Auto Sales in Brussels; and the shipping business being transferred to Marubeni's office in London. However, this does not mean we have reduced our activities - both offices are more aggressive than ever in trying to advance new businesses in both established and new fields.

 
The King's Tower in Stockholm where the Marubeni office is located. This building was the tallest building in Europe when it was erected in 1928.
Our Chemical Department is now pursuing business in a variety of areas including: biotechnology projects and products (e.g. milk bacteria), chipsets for G2 and G3 cellular base stations, jet propulsion fuel, plastic additives, macro molecules for environmental cleansing, vitamins and such.

In the General Merchandise Department, pulp and paper has traditionally been the main line of business, but since this is now handled by Marubeni Pulp & Paper Sales Europe GmbH, the department is looking for new business opportunities in new fields such as tissue paper from Lithuania, synthetic leather, furniture, sawn timber, Bridgestone tires and metals.

In recent years, the Machinery Department has been focusing on telecommunications and broadcasting systems. Marubeni is the agent in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for NEC infrastructure systems and the local agent for Sumitomo Electric. Sumitomo is one of the world's leading manufacturers of fiber optic and photonics systems. It is really an achievement that Marubeni has been able to successfully compete with Ericsson and Nokia on their own turf.

In the future it is necessary for the Machinery Department to widen and expand its lines of business and the new areas of focus are railway infrastructure, power generation systems and such.

In ending this short presentation on our offices we would like to take this opportunity to state that we are all open to new business ideas and proposals from other Marubeni offices throughout the world. For more information about our activities as well as contact information, please visit our homepage.

- Stefan Wiren

About the Authors
Stefan Wiren and Henry Nyholm both joined Marubeni in 1981 and have since mainly been working in the area of machinery business. Even after 24 years, they both are continuously looking forward to new challenges and new business prospects.
 
  
Established:
Stockholm Office: set up as liaison office in 1965 and incorporated as Marubeni Scandinavia AB in 1970
Helsinki Office: set up as liaison office in 1972

Trading Regions: Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus

Main Businesses and Products:
Telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure systems, mail-handling systems, biometric systems, infrastructure systems, metals, chemicals and general merchandise

Employees:
Stockholm office: 8
Helsinki office: 2

Homepage:
http://www.marubeni.se
http://www.europe.marubeni.com

Stockholm's landmark City Hall where the ceremonial presentations of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Prize Banquet take place The King's Tower in Stockholm where the Marubeni office is located. This building was the tallest building in Europe when it was erected in 1928.

Marubeni quarterly magazine "shosha" VOL.79 (May,2004)