As Sweden’s banks face a wave of bad loans, the country sometimes seen as the master of bank rescues is again put to the test. So far, it has a steady hand on the tiller.

Swedbank and SEB, two of the country’s largest lenders, have taken large writedowns on loans made in the Baltic and to a lesser degree in Ukraine. The collapse of those economies is weighing on balance sheets in Stockholm: 7 per cent of Swedbank’s Baltic loan book is now nonperforming. This week it placed a surprise $2.1bn rights issue to pad its capital.