Domestic and Multinational Banking

The evolution of the Swedish market model

“…It was in 1657 that the Dutch entrepreneur Johan Palmstruch founded Stockholm Banco, the first Swedish bank, in Stockholm, Sweden's capital city. However, this bank would revolutionise finance by printing the first credit notes in Europe, the precursors of the modern finance system (Weston, 2012). In 1664, the bank ceased operating but four years later it was re‐formed as Riksens Ständers Bank, later renamed Sveriges Riksbank.…”

“…The first example of Sweden's early adaptation of modern economic concepts is that it hosted the world's first public company (Ek & Renberg, 2001; Enders & Haggstrom, 2018; Gittleson, 2012). In the second example, while Sweden was later in developing banking than other parts of Europe, the first Swedish bank revolutionised European finance by printing the first credit notes in Europe, and then evolved into the world's first central bank (Edvinsson et al, 2018; Palgrave, 1873; Weston, 2012). The third example embraces the intellectual understanding of the capitalist free market system, in which Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations is an important historical cornerstone; yet the concise booklet Den nationella vinsten ( The National Gain ), written by the Finnish–Swedish author Anders Chydenius, and making a very similar case to Smith's for free‐enterprise economic policies, was published in Stockholm 11 years before Smith's influential work appeared in London (Chydenius, 1765; Smith, 1776).…”