Rainmaker has agreed to buy all shares in Yellow Holding, owner of B2B sales outsourcer Inhouse Group, and is investigating a listing on Nasdaq First North Growth Market Finland. The Finnish sales and customer service outsourcer had 2025 turnover of EUR 45.9 million.

Rainmaker buys Inhouse to close the gap on its EUR 7 million B2B target 

Rainmaker aims to grow its B2B business to around EUR 7 million by the end of its 2025 to 2027 strategy period. B2B sales revenue was EUR 1.6 million in the first half, up from EUR 1.0 million. Two pilot assignments did not move into production, and volumes in its SDR service fell in spring before recovering in early summer. Inhouse covers prospecting, customer acquisition and appointment booking, and will keep its own brand. The purchase price was not disclosed.

“Inhouse Group has built a strong position in demanding B2B solution sales and developed operating models that perfectly complement Rainmaker's business entity. The acquisition supports our strategy to grow and strengthens our position as a growth partner for our customers,” says Tapio Korttilalli, CEO of Rainmaker, in the press release.

Inhouse follows two acquisitions in the first half of 2026

In February, Rainmaker bought telephone sales company Myyntimestarit and its roughly 60 sales professionals. It also bought Digizer's e-commerce customer service business.  First-half revenue rose 14.2% to EUR 24.6 million, with organic growth of 10.6% and acquisitions adding 3.6 percentage points. Comparable EBITDA rose to EUR 1.7 million, or 7.0% of revenue, the bottom of its 7 to 10% medium-term target range.

Boreo has appointed Lassi Simola, currently Workout and Restructuring Executive at Nordea, as Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Group Management Team. He starts no later than 4 January 2027, ending an interim arrangement that has divided the finance role between two people since February.

Boreo brings back a CFO after deciding in February to manage without one

In December 2025, Boreo announced that CFO Jesse Petäjä would step down and said it had started recruiting a successor. In February 2026, it changed course and decided not to appoint a CFO for the time being. Rafael Osmanov became Head of M&A and Financing, and Vice President Finance Sami Hanerva took over financial reporting.

Once Simola starts, Hanerva will report to him in his current role. Osmanov will support the onboarding, and his contract ends by the end of March 2027.

The new CFO and the CEO both come from private equity and consulting dealmaking

Simola has more than 15 years in finance, over 10 of them in private equity, and is a CFA charterholder. Tuomas Kahri, CEO since 1 April 2026, was previously a partner at McKinsey & Company and Intera Partners. The hire is the first CFO appointment under Kahri.

“Lassi brings to Boreo strong expertise in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. He has extensive experience working with small and medium-sized companies and possesses an excellent understanding of the challenges and opportunities these businesses face,” says Tuomas Kahri, CEO of Boreo, in the press release.

SRV Group has reorganised into four business areas from 1 October 2026 and added two members to its Corporate Executive Team. Jarkko Salmenoja becomes SVP, Data Centres, and Marko Palonen, most recently YIT's regional director for Northern Finland, becomes SVP, Northern Finland at the start of 2027.

Data centres move from a unit to a business area of their own

Until now, Data Centres sat inside the Business Premises, Helsinki Metropolitan Area business area. It now runs as a separate business area responsible for nationwide development, customer relationships and project delivery. Salmenoja has worked at SRV since August 2025 and previously held senior management roles at NCC, WSP Finland and YIT.

The pipeline explains the promotion. In March, SRV agreed to build a data centre in Lahti for Singapore-based DayOne, a contract expected to lift the order backlog by about 35% from the level in the fourth-quarter 2025 report. In December 2025, it started the EUR 54 million implementation phase of the LUMI AI Factory data centre in Kajaani with CSC. First-quarter 2026 order intake reached EUR 395.4 million, the highest of the decade, with DayOne named as a driver.

“Alongside our already strong contracting business, we seek growth in data centre construction, whose exceptionally large and rapidly growing market we have highlighted previously,” says Saku Sipola, President and CEO of SRV, in the press release.

Elecster's board has named Deputy CEO Juuso Halonen as chief executive from 1 December 2026. Arto Kinnunen, CEO since 2017 and with the group for more than 30 years, leaves the role on 30 November and stays on as management advisor. On the same day, CFO Veronika Halonen becomes deputy CEO, eleven months after taking the finance role.

The March deputy appointment was the succession plan

On 5 March, Elecster appointed Halonen deputy CEO and a member of the management team from 30 March, reporting to Kinnunen. The stated remit was global sales and marketing and the development of management systems. Seven months later, the board has confirmed what that move signalled.

Halonen is an insider in every sense. He joined the group in 2011, has been CIO since 2019 and has sat on the board since 2024. At the time of the March appointment he held 32,705 Elecster shares. The company says Kinnunen's advisory role is meant to secure continuity through the year-end financial statement process, which places the first results under the new CEO in early 2027.

“Juuso knows Elecster, its business, personnel and international operating environment very well. The Board believes that his long experience with the company and the close work with Arto in recent months create a strong foundation for transferring the CEO's responsibility and further developing Elecster's operations,” says Jukka Halonen, Chairman of the Board, in the press release.

“I am pleased that the change of CEO can be implemented in a planned and controlled manner. I have worked closely with Juuso, and I can confidently transfer the responsibility of CEO to him,” says Arto Kinnunen.

He inherits a company whose order book has halved since March

The numbers Halonen takes over are thin. First-half 2026 revenue fell around 5.2% to EUR 15.8 million, and operating profit dropped to EUR 0.1 million from EUR 0.5 million a year earlier. The order backlog stood at EUR 4.8 million at the end of June, down from EUR 8.6 million at the end of March, as the Middle East conflict delayed customer investment decisions. A fire at the Kenyan subsidiary in Nairobi added around EUR 0.4 million in one-off costs.

The longer trend points the same way. Full-year 2025 revenue fell around 3.6% to EUR 32.7 million, and operating margin narrowed to 3.0% from 4.7%. The April AGM approved no dividend. The Russian packaging business, which the company says it will keep running for now, is the risk it flags most directly in the H1 report. Elecster still guides for revenue growth and improved earnings per share in 2026.

Halonen's own priorities match the gap. He names international sales and marketing, the service business and presence in core markets as the areas to develop, while keeping profitability as a cornerstone.

“Reliability, customer focus and profitability remain the cornerstones of our operations. At the same time, we must develop international sales and marketing, service business, our products and operating methods, and strengthen our presence and customer cooperation in our key market areas,” says Juuso Halonen in the press release.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation will pay USD 6.5 million for Nightingale Health to analyse 60,000 UK Biobank samples for neurodegeneration markers. The company disclosed the agreement as inside information on 30 September. A day later, Nightingale published an annual report setting a revenue target of at least EUR 10 million for the current financial year.

The work will use Alamar Biosciences' NULISAseq™ Neuro 220 Panel, which is designed for neurodegeneration and other brain health conditions. At the Foundation's direction, the dataset goes to UK Biobank and opens to the wider research community in 2027. The aim is to find blood markers that change years before the symptoms of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's appear.

CEO and founder Teemu Suna said the company believes the deal will produce the world's largest brain health-focused proteomics study on a single research cohort.

The contract puts Nightingale's move into proteomics to work

The annual report says Nightingale expanded its offering into proteomics in response to growing interest in multiomics, strengthening its position in the research market. The step came through its November 2025 partnership with Alamar.

The report describes research as a separate business with its own customers and products. It is also where much of the evidence for Nightingale's healthcare business comes from, including measurements of all roughly 500,000 UK Biobank participants. The largest research agreements the report lists for the past financial year were with Aalborg University, at about EUR 2.4 million, and the Moli-sani study, at about EUR 0.7 million.

Digital sovereignty is moving off the IT compliance list and onto the board's risk agenda. Vivicta's Nordic Digital Sovereignty Survey 2026, published on 22 September, finds that seven in ten organisations expect to increase their sovereignty investment over the next twelve months, while fewer than three in ten are confident they control their critical data.

Not long ago, the CIO of a large Swedish company told Vivicta's CEO Satu Kiiskinen what his single highest priority was. It was knowing where the company's business-critical data actually sits. He knew a moment would come when the executive team and the board would ask him that question, and he wanted the answer ready.

The question stopped being technical

Digital sovereignty means an organisation's ability to retain control and decision-making authority over its critical data, systems and operational continuity, including when the operating environment changes.

The definition might sound like an IT matter. According to Kiiskinen, that is precisely the problem. In executive teams and boardrooms the subject is still treated too often as a compliance and technology question. Her own view is different: this is first and foremost about business continuity, risk management and the capacity to keep operating when conditions shift.

“It’s clear that sovereignty has become an increasingly important priority in the current geopolitical environment. Digital sovereignty has become a leadership priority linked to business continuity and risk management, and it’s no longer seen as just a compliance issue”

The gap is not in the budget

The survey, run by Vivicta in collaboration with the research company Kairos Future, drew 320 senior decision-makers and key advisers in Finland, Sweden and Norway between June and July 2026. All worked in organisations employing more than 500 people.

The findings describe a subject that is recognised but not yet governed:

• 70 per cent expect sovereignty-related investment to increase over the next 12 months.

• 46 per cent have a formal, explicit sovereignty strategy.

• 29 per cent strongly believe they control their critical data to a sufficient standard.

This, Kiiskinen says, is the most interesting result in the dataset. The subject is recognised, it is discussed, and organisations are willing to put money behind it. The capability still does not match the ambition. A gap has opened between intent and execution.

For a board, that is a familiar situation in unfamiliar clothing: an investment decision is coming up on a matter that too often has no strategy, no named owner and no metric.

Finland invests most. Sweden is further ahead on strategy.

Seventy-four per cent of Finnish organisations plan to increase investment, more than in Norway (69 per cent) or Sweden (68 per cent). On strategy the order reverses: a formal sovereignty strategy exists at 53 per cent of Swedish organisations, 44 per cent of Finnish ones and 39 per cent of Norwegian ones.

On control of critical data, Finland leads the comparison at 35 per cent, with Sweden and Norway at 26 per cent. Finland is ahead of its Nordic peers, and still only one Finnish organisation in three strongly believes it has sufficient control of its critical data.

Sweden, Kiiskinen notes, put sovereignty on the table some time ago. The CIO in the opening example represents that stage: the question is no longer whether the subject matters, but whether the organisation can answer when asked.

The opportunity is competitiveness.

Kiiskinen does not frame the subject as a threat. She sees it primarily as an opportunity to strengthen an organisation's resilience and competitiveness, and, ultimately, shareholder value.

Artificial intelligence connects to this directly. When the AI conversation runs hot and business benefits are wanted quickly, control of data determines whether AI can be adopted in a governed way, with risks identified in advance rather than reconstructed afterwards. Twenty-seven per cent of respondents rank AI, data use and control of decision-making among their most important sovereignty priorities. Seventeen per cent see AI as a new obstacle to data control.

On the risk side, Kiiskinen names one above the others: excessive dependency on individual providers.

Respondents agree. Dependency on external service providers tops the entire list of obstacles at 28 per cent. Cost and the complexity of an organisation's own environment follow at 23 per cent each, vendor lock-in at 16 per cent, and the absence of a strategy, owner or governance model at 14 per cent.

Dependency is rarely anyone's decision. It accumulates. Each individual choice was defensible at the time, and the result is a structure no one designed. It becomes visible only when something has to change quickly.

Full control is not the goal

Kiiskinen is careful not to overstate what the survey shows.

Complete sovereignty across every system is neither realistic nor the point, Kiiskinen says. What matters is distinguishing what is business-critical from what is not. The organisations that find a sensible balance are the ones that find resilience when conditions change

The data supports her. Only 8 per cent of respondents consider standard or global cloud sufficient for all critical workloads, and exactly the same share require full national sovereignty with elevated security. Everyone else sits somewhere in between. Seventeen per cent have not assessed the question at all.

“Ultimately, sovereignty is about freedom of action: the ability to remain in control when technology, suppliers or circumstances change. Organisations that find the right balance will be better positioned to innovate, grow and manage risk simultaneously”

What the board should ask

Kiiskinen does not present this as an easy topic for a board. The natural route onto the agenda, she says, runs through the audit committee, as part of risk management and business continuity. That does not mean it stays there. The whole board needs to take an interest.

Five questions a board can put to management at its next meeting:

1. Do we share a view of which data is business-critical to us?

2. Which systems are business-critical, and do we understand the difference between the two?

3. Where does our business-critical data actually reside, and how is it governed?

4. Who has access to it?

5. To what extent are our data, systems and decision-making genuinely under our own control, and which part of our preparedness is an assumption rather than something tested?

None of these requires technical expertise to ask. On the evidence of this survey, many organisations would struggle to answer them.

Which leaves one question on the table, and it belongs to the board rather than to IT: are boards challenging management hard enough, before the next disruption reveals the real state of their readiness?

Consumer confidence in Finland slipped in September, ending a three-month climb from April's low. Beneath the headline figure, a sharper pattern is forming. Households now rate Finland's prospects at their long-term average, while their view of their own past year remains well below pre-2022 levels, and the lowest earners are still losing purchasing power.

The consumer confidence indicator stood at 4.9 below zero in September, down from 3.0 below zero in August. August had been the strongest reading since February 2022. The long-term average since 1995 is 2.9 below zero. The indicator has now been below zero for 55 consecutive months, every month since March 2022. 

The rebound itself was fast. In April the indicator sat at 12.5 below zero, and by August it had recovered 9.5 points. September's dip is small, and one month does not make a reversal. What matters more is which parts of the survey carried the recovery, and which did not.

The national outlook has recovered 18 points since April, the household view far less

Most of the improvement since April's low has come from how consumers see Finland. The national outlook accounts for about 60 per cent of the indicator's 7.6-point rise. Consumers' view of their own past year has moved far less.

Expectations for Finland's economy over the next 12 months improved from a balance of 23.2 below zero in April to 4.7 below zero in September, which is on its long-term average level. Between March 2022 and August 2026, the same measure averaged 16.9 below zero.

Households' assessment of their own finances tells a different story. The balance for own economy now stood at 1.9 below zero in September, against an average of 4.9 above zero in the five and a half years before March 2022. Expectations for one's own economy in 12 months fell to 5.8 from 8.1 in August, short of the pre-2022 average of 9.8. Twenty-eight per cent of consumers said their finances were worse than a year earlier, while 25 per cent said better.

The gap follows income, not prices

Labour Institute for Economic Research Labore estimates that purchasing power in the bottom income decile will decline by 3.5 per cent this year, while the top decile gains 2.2 per cent. Between 2023 and 2026, the difference in purchasing power growth between the two groups will exceed 16 percentage points, with renters and single parents facing the weakest outlook. Senior researcher Milla Nyyssölä attributes the split to "different income trajectories" rather than prices.

Labore describes this as unusual by historical standards. Even in the growth years after Finland's 1990s recession, when income growth varied widely between groups, purchasing power in the lowest decile did not fall.

The confidence survey shows the same fault line. Upper-level salaried employees posted a confidence reading of 1.1 above zero in September, while the unemployed stood at 13.1 below zero and pensioners at 11.5 below zero. Greater Helsinki recorded 2.4 below zero and Eastern Finland 10.7 below zero. Women's reading of 7.4 below zero remained well under men's 2.4 below zero.

Job security is part of the explanation. Among employed consumers, 27 per cent felt their personal risk of unemployment or lay-off had increased, and only 5 per cent felt it had lessened (Statistics Finland). Price pressure has not eased either: consumers estimated inflation at 4.9 per cent over the past year and expect 4.1 per cent over the next.

LapWall Corporation has named Tiina Määttä as Chief Financial Officer and Legal Officer, one day after announcing the departure of CFO Tuomo Riihonen. Määttä joins the management team on 1 October 2026. She takes over finance at the point where the company's full-year guidance depends on a sharper second half and on a factory ramp-up that has already slipped once.

Riihonen's employment ended on 24 September, the day his exit was announced, with CEO Jarmo Pekkarinen covering the CFO duties in the interim. No reason was given. Seven weeks earlier, Riihonen presented the half-year results alongside Pekkarinen. 

The first half delivered growth, but the guidance needs a margin step-up

LapWall's January to June revenue rose 24.0% to EUR 23.3 million, and EBITA grew 80.1% to EUR 2.0 million. The EBITA margin reached 8.6%, against 5.9% a year earlier. Between quarters, however, the margin moved the other way, falling from 9.5% in the first quarter to 7.9% in the second, although both were ahead of the prior year 

The company kept its guidance for 2026 of EUR 49 to 54 million in revenue and EUR 4.8 to 5.8 million in EBITA. 

Order backlog gives visibility, the Pyhännä factory sets the pace

Demand is not the constraint. The order backlog reached EUR 25.4 million at the end of June, the highest in the company's history, and the offer pipeline stood at nearly EUR 60 million. Pekkarinen pointed to data centre construction as a growing segment, including a supply agreement for XTX Markets' data centre project in Kajaani.

Capacity is the variable. The new Pyhännä factory, LapWall's largest investment to date, was about 95% complete on a cost basis at the end of June. In April, the aim was single-shift production across the whole factory during 2026. By August, the target to meet the investment's production goals had moved to the final quarter of the year, with the company noting that ramp-up remained behind its original schedule. Headcount rose from 127 to 143 over the year to June.

Ville Raatikainen, a manufacturing engineering director at iLOQ with an R&D and product management background at Nokia, joins the Management Team on January 1, 2027. He is the second outside hire to the team since July, and he starts in the year the PCB maker commissions its expanded Oulu plant.

Aspocomp has appointed Ville Raatikainen (born 1984), M.Sc. (Eng.), as Chief Engineering and Technology Officer and a member of the Management Team from January 1, 2027. He currently serves as Director, Product Lifecycle and Manufacturing Engineering at iLOQ Oy and previously held R&D and product management roles at Nokia. Chief Technology Officer Mitri Mattila will stay with the company and report to Raatikainen. Mattila has worked at Aspocomp since 1997 and sat on the Management Team since 2018. 

Chief executive Manu Skyttä's endorsement speaks to production as much as to technology:

Ville has a strong track record in managing complex technical environments, improving production performance, and developing high-quality, cost-effective design operations. He has a strong background in both global listed companies like Nokia and fast-growing technology companies like iLOQ, and I am pleased to welcome him to Aspocomp. 

Six of seven Management Team members will have joined since 2024

Raatikainen follows Ilkka Lohi, who became Quality Director on September 2, 2026 in a role the company raised to Management Team level. Listeds data shows how far the renewal runs. Skyttä became chief executive in 2024 after serving as EVP, Operations at Patria, and Pekka Holopainen joined the team as operations chief the same year. Hanna-Leena Keskitalo and Terhi Launis followed in 2025, with Launis taking over finance on September, 2025. When the January 2027 line-up takes effect, Antti Ojala, a member since 2013, will be the only one whose seat predates 2024.

This is a team assembled for the expansion, not inherited from the loss years. The board supplies the sector memory. Chairman Ville Vuori is a former Incap chief executive, and director Anssi Korhonen was CTO of VTI Technologies.

The hire lands as Oulu moves from construction to yield

The Oulu program is worth more than EUR 10 million and aims to lift throughput capacity by up to 50%. Demand had already outrun the plant. At the strategy launch in November 2025, Skyttä said: “The capacity of the Oulu plant has been fully utilized throughout 2025, and demand has already exceeded our capacity.The growth in demand in our largest customer segments appears likely to continue over the next 5–10 years.” The building extension was finished on schedule and within budget, and new capacity is to be commissioned in phases throughout 2027. By July the automated warehouse was running, factory acceptance tests for new production lines had begun, and management said the second half would center on production quality and yield.

The risks are operational. Spare-parts shortages after an equipment manufacturer's bankruptcy slowed deliveries in the first quarter. Delivery times for laminates, fiberglass, resins and copper foil are lengthening and prices are rising, and the company warns that the installations may temporarily disrupt production. Those are manufacturing engineering problems, and that is the experience Raatikainen brings from iLOQ.

A record order book still has to turn into margin

The order book reached a record EUR 25.9 million at the end of June, with parts stretching to late 2027. Semiconductor customers placed 38% of second-quarter orders and defense customers 25%, while the five largest customers' share of net sales fell to 58% (75%). Profit has lagged, weighed down until the second quarter by low-margin orders agreed in 2024. Skyttä's position is unambiguous: “We expect profitability to improve in the second half of the year.”

Drone countermeasures company Sensofusion plans to list on Nasdaq Helsinki in October at a pre-money valuation of up to €1.3 billion. That would make it the first growth company to join the Helsinki exchange valued above €1 billion. The company aims to raise about €300 million in new shares, and four Finnish institutions have already committed €170 million of that.

The anchor investors are Elo, Ilmarinen, Varma and funds managed by OP Fund Management . The offering will include a public offering in Finland and an institutional offering in Finland and internationally, including in the US. The majority shareholder, Haave Oy, and some other shareholders will also sell existing shares.

A 60.8% operating margin carries the valuation

Sensofusion's revenue rose almost 90% in 2025 to €35 million, with profit of more than €23 million. In the first half of 2026, revenue grew another 122%. In the 12 months to the end of June 2026, the operating margin was 60.8%. Revenue grew at an average annual rate of 91.1% between the 2024 financial year and that 12-month period. Earlier this decade, annual revenue was around €700,000.

The company's main product, Airfence, detects hostile drones and can disable them by radio jamming. Customers include Ukraine, NASA, the Finnish Defence Forces and the Finnish Border Guard. "A large number of our customers are operational in some way, involved in war," said founder and CEO Tuomas Rasila.

The company says most of its revenue already comes from outside conflict zones. Rasila expects demand to grow whether or not the war in Ukraine continues, pointing to NATO members' commitment to spend 3.5 to 5% of GDP on defence. "There is nothing we hope for more than the end of war," he said. Chairman Timo Ahopelto put the market's annual growth at about 30%. "By 2030, the market will increase approximately fivefold," he said.

The proceeds will fund research and development in software, detection and countermeasure technologies, artificial intelligence and satellite capabilities. They will also pay for more production and testing capacity and strengthen the balance sheet.

The European Commission is set to block the €1.42 billion graphic paper joint venture between UPM and Sappi after the two companies declined to offer concessions, according to people familiar with the matter. The report lands six weeks before UPM's other portfolio exit, the demerger of its plywood business into WISA Group, is due to complete.

The companies also failed to persuade regulators at a closed-door hearing earlier that week, where they argued the deal would make the industry more sustainable and resilient. Selling assets to win approval is not considered an option because buyers are hard to find. The Commission has until 11 November to decide. UPM and Sappi declined to comment.

UPM planned to move about 30% of its sales out of the group

The two transactions together cover Communication Papers, with €2,493 million in 2025 sales, and Plywood, with €409 million. Against group sales of €9,656 million, that is roughly 30% of UPM's revenue, according to Listeds calculations based on the company figures.

The plywood exit is close to done. UPM's extraordinary general meeting approved the WISA Group demerger on 31 August 2026 and elected its board, chaired by Tapio Korpeinen. Completion is expected on or about 31 October, with trading on Nasdaq Helsinki from 2 November. Shareholders receive one WISA share for each UPM share, and the Finnish Tax Administration has ruled the demerger tax-neutral.

The difference between the two is who has the final say. The demerger needed UPM's own shareholders, a tax ruling and a prospectus approval, and it has cleared all three. The joint venture needs merger control approval from the European Commission and from authorities in the US and China. WISA starts trading on 2 November, and the Commission must decide by 11 November. Within those nine days, UPM will learn whether it is exiting one business or two.

Regulatory concerns grew while the deal moved forward on schedule

UPM and Sappi signed a non-binding letter of intent on 4 December 2025. The plan was a non-listed 50/50 joint venture combining Sappi's European graphic paper business with UPM Communication Papers in Europe, the UK and the US. The Commission opened a Phase II investigation on 28 April 2026. UPM called this a normal step when initial concerns have not been resolved 

One month later, on 28 May, the parties signed the definitive agreement. They also secured €600 million of external financing and a €100 million revolving credit facility, both underwritten by Citi and Nordea. 

In August the Commission sent a statement of objections. It said the venture could gain enough market power to raise prices and lower quality in coated mechanical and coated wood-free paper, the grades used for magazines, books and promotional print. "The Commission is currently unconvinced that integrating the relevant activities in the joint venture would bring enough benefits, in terms of cost savings or environmental or resilience improvements, to offset the potential harm," it said.

UPM said it was confident it could respond fully to the concerns, and that it "remains convinced that the planned joint venture is a necessary step to secure reliable supply continuity for graphic paper customers in Europe". Sappi called the objections a "standard" step and said it expected a positive outcome by the end of the year. Three weeks later, the companies declined to offer concessions.

Both of UPM's exits were staffed from inside the parent companies

The companies kept building the organisation after the objections arrived. In early September, Gunnar Eberhardt was conditionally nominated as CEO and Stephen Blyth as CFO. On 14 September four more nominations followed: Jan Gustafsson for human resources, Marco Eikelenboom for sales and marketing, Antti Hermonen for operations, and Jan-Sander van Tuijl for supply chain 

Of the five nominees whose current roles were disclosed, three come from Sappi Europe and two from UPM Communication Papers. Eikelenboom, currently CEO of Sappi Europe, commented in December that “To remain competitive and sustainable in the long term, consolidation is needed. Consolidation will contribute to a more robust and resilient European graphic paper industry, safeguarding security of domestic supply for the printing sector.” All the nominations depend on regulatory approval, and the current leaders stay in their roles until closing. If the veto happens, the whole team stays where it is.

The same pattern holds at WISA, where Tuija Suur-Hamari moves from running UPM Plywood to chief executive of the new listed company. Listeds has covered the leadership side of this year's Helsinki demergers in Two new listed CEOs, no search, no external hire. The difference is that Suur-Hamari's appointment is certain, while the joint venture team's depends on Brussels.