Between 2020 and 2021, the Riksbank lent SEK 12 billion via corporate bonds. Among them the now ailing SBB and Heimstaden.
The purchases may have helped inflate what has been described as an unsustainable real estate bubble. "It seems less wise today, to put it mildly," says Stig Westerdahl, professor of business administration at Malmö University. "They went in to protect individual companies even if there were no problems," says economist Cecilia Hermansson.