Ovaro's board has costed its IFRS reporting at €300,000 a year and asked shareholders to move down to First North, with the share still publicly traded. Days earlier, Innofactor's Sami Ensio put his own exit price at €700,000.

On 18 August, the board of Ovaro Kiinteistösijoitus Oyj proposed that shareholders move the company from Nasdaq Helsinki's regulated main market to First North Growth Market Finland, while it remains publicly traded. An extraordinary general meeting decides on 8 September. The same morning, Ovaro withdrew its 2026 guidance.

The saving is a fifth of last year's profit

The move lets Ovaro drop IFRS, mandatory on the main market, for Finnish FAS, which First North permits.

The board puts the savings at approximately €300,000 a year. CEO Marko Huttunen told Keskisuomalainen that is about 14% of the company's administrative costs.

Set that against the company. Ovaro's 2025 revenue was €4.288m, down from €5.262m in 2024, on a net result of €1.468m. The saving is roughly a fifth of last year's profit, at a company with four employees and an €80.4m balance sheet at 31 March 2026.

Innofactor's founder priced the same listing at €700,000, then left entirely

Three days before Ovaro's announcement, Talouselämä reported Sami Ensio, founder and chief executive of the software company Innofactor, estimating that operating as a listed company meant roughly €700,000 a year in additional costs, and naming regulation as a central reason for leaving the exchange. Innofactor left by the other door: Onni Bidco's tender offer took it private, the company applied for delisting on 31 March 2025, and the shares were listed for the last time on Nasdaq Helsinki on 25 April 2025.

The two figures are not like-for-like. Ensio's €700,000 is a chief executive's estimate of the full cost of being listed; Ovaro's €300,000 is a board's estimate of one line item, the switch from IFRS to FAS reporting.

The staircase normally runs the other way

When Toivo Group — a Finnish real estate developer, like Ovaro — stepped up from First North Finland to the Helsinki main market in June 2025, Nasdaq counted it as the 18th company to make that move over the past years in Finland and the 143rd in the Nordics. Both are running totals, not 2025 counts. In Stockholm, Nasdaq's 2025 changes-to-the-list records seven companies moving up from First North in that single year and one moving down: Lucara. Helsinki closed 2025 with 136 main market companies and 47 on First North. The main market has since grown to 147 companies, while the First North roster remains unchanged. 

Shareholders vote on 8 September, and Ovaro expects First North trading to begin before the end of 2026. The most interesting number is not €300,000. It is 14% — the share of administrative costs one Finnish board has now put on the record.

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Eighteen Finnish companies have climbed to the Helsinki main list. Ovaro wants to climb down.

Eighteen Finnish companies have climbed to the Helsinki main list. Ovaro wants to climb down.

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Ovaro's board has costed its IFRS reporting at €300,000 a year and asked shareholders to move down to First North, with the share still publicly traded. Days earlier, Innofactor's Sami Ensio put his own exit price at €700,000.

On 18 August, the board of Ovaro Kiinteistösijoitus Oyj proposed that shareholders move the company from Nasdaq Helsinki's regulated main market to First North Growth Market Finland, while it remains publicly traded. An extraordinary general meeting decides on 8 September. The same morning, Ovaro withdrew its 2026 guidance.

The saving is a fifth of last year's profit

The move lets Ovaro drop IFRS, mandatory on the main market, for Finnish FAS, which First North permits.

The board puts the savings at approximately €300,000 a year. CEO Marko Huttunen told Keskisuomalainen that is about 14% of the company's administrative costs.

Set that against the company. Ovaro's 2025 revenue was €4.288m, down from €5.262m in 2024, on a net result of €1.468m. The saving is roughly a fifth of last year's profit, at a company with four employees and an €80.4m balance sheet at 31 March 2026.

Innofactor's founder priced the same listing at €700,000, then left entirely

Three days before Ovaro's announcement, Talouselämä reported Sami Ensio, founder and chief executive of the software company Innofactor, estimating that operating as a listed company meant roughly €700,000 a year in additional costs, and naming regulation as a central reason for leaving the exchange. Innofactor left by the other door: Onni Bidco's tender offer took it private, the company applied for delisting on 31 March 2025, and the shares were listed for the last time on Nasdaq Helsinki on 25 April 2025.

The two figures are not like-for-like. Ensio's €700,000 is a chief executive's estimate of the full cost of being listed; Ovaro's €300,000 is a board's estimate of one line item, the switch from IFRS to FAS reporting.

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The staircase normally runs the other way

When Toivo Group — a Finnish real estate developer, like Ovaro — stepped up from First North Finland to the Helsinki main market in June 2025, Nasdaq counted it as the 18th company to make that move over the past years in Finland and the 143rd in the Nordics. Both are running totals, not 2025 counts. In Stockholm, Nasdaq's 2025 changes-to-the-list records seven companies moving up from First North in that single year and one moving down: Lucara. Helsinki closed 2025 with 136 main market companies and 47 on First North. The main market has since grown to 147 companies, while the First North roster remains unchanged. 

Shareholders vote on 8 September, and Ovaro expects First North trading to begin before the end of 2026. The most interesting number is not €300,000. It is 14% — the share of administrative costs one Finnish board has now put on the record.

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Authors

Founder and ceo

Helene Auramo is a co-founder of Listeds and Nordic Listed Leaders. She has previously co-founded Slush, Indiedays, Zipipop, and Okimo Clinic, building ventures at the intersection of media, technology, and community. She holds board positions at the Finnish Business School Graduates (Suomen Ekonomit) and Finnvera, and serves as Chair of the Investment Committee at the Finnish Business School Graduates. Helene is also a columnist for Talouselämä, Finland’s leading business magazine, and Aamulehti, one of the country’s largest newspapers. Her work focuses on leadership, growth, and the structures that shape decision-making in Nordic companies. She was awarded Future Board Member of the Year in 2022 by Future Board.

Founder and ceo

Helene Auramo is a co-founder of Listeds and Nordic Listed Leaders. She has previously co-founded Slush, Indiedays, Zipipop, and Okimo Clinic, building ventures at the intersection of media, technology, and community. She holds board positions at the Finnish Business School Graduates (Suomen Ekonomit) and Finnvera, and serves as Chair of the Investment Committee at the Finnish Business School Graduates. Helene is also a columnist for Talouselämä, Finland’s leading business magazine, and Aamulehti, one of the country’s largest newspapers. Her work focuses on leadership, growth, and the structures that shape decision-making in Nordic companies. She was awarded Future Board Member of the Year in 2022 by Future Board.

Devdatta Temgire is a data and business analyst at Listeds. He contributes research, data analysis, and pattern detection to the publication’s coverage of Nordic-listed companies, with a focus on board composition, leadership transitions, and financials. He holds an honors degree in artificial intelligence and data science alongside a bachelor’s in computer engineering, and previously worked at KPMG.

Devdatta Temgire is a data and business analyst at Listeds. He contributes research, data analysis, and pattern detection to the publication’s coverage of Nordic-listed companies, with a focus on board composition, leadership transitions, and financials. He holds an honors degree in artificial intelligence and data science alongside a bachelor’s in computer engineering, and previously worked at KPMG.

Authors

Founder and ceo

Helene Auramo is a co-founder of Listeds and Nordic Listed Leaders. She has previously co-founded Slush, Indiedays, Zipipop, and Okimo Clinic, building ventures at the intersection of media, technology, and community. She holds board positions at the Finnish Business School Graduates (Suomen Ekonomit) and Finnvera, and serves as Chair of the Investment Committee at the Finnish Business School Graduates. Helene is also a columnist for Talouselämä, Finland’s leading business magazine, and Aamulehti, one of the country’s largest newspapers. Her work focuses on leadership, growth, and the structures that shape decision-making in Nordic companies. She was awarded Future Board Member of the Year in 2022 by Future Board.

Devdatta Temgire is a data and business analyst at Listeds. He contributes research, data analysis, and pattern detection to the publication’s coverage of Nordic-listed companies, with a focus on board composition, leadership transitions, and financials. He holds an honors degree in artificial intelligence and data science alongside a bachelor’s in computer engineering, and previously worked at KPMG.

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Leadership Moves

Elecster keeps leadership inside the board as Juuso Halonen becomes CEO

Oct 2, 2026

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.

Halonen family will hold both top executive roles and four of six board seats

The appointment concentrates leadership further. The board elected at the April 2026 AGM has six members: Aija Bärlund, Jarmo Halonen, Jukka Halonen as chair, Juuso Halonen, Veronika Halonen and Timo Kangas. From December, the CEO and deputy CEO will both come from that board.

“With her analytical and dynamic approach, Veronika Halonen has taken on the responsibilities of her current position well, and with this appointment as Deputy CEO, we are clarifying the Group's overall management structure,” says Jukka Halonen.

For a company of Elecster's size, an internal successor with seven months of supervised handover is a defensible choice. It also means the board chose continuity over an external search at a point when the business needs commercial renewal. Whether that trade pays off will show first in the order book, not in the governance chart.

Market Signals

Nightingale Health's USD 6.5 million brain health deal lands as it targets EUR 10 million in revenue

Oct 1, 2026

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.

Revenue follows the samples, and the first read comes in March

Nightingale's revenue for the financial year ended June 2026 was EUR 5.50 million, up from EUR 4.69 million. That fell short of the more than 50% growth the company had targeted. In June, Nightingale warned that a EUR 2.4 million project announced in September 2025 had been delayed for reasons outside its control. As a result, about EUR 2 million of revenue moves into the current financial year. Suna called it "timing, not lost business".

The company recognises revenue over time as samples are analysed. It collects advance payments for most of its services, and the gap between payment and analysis is typically three to six months. The release gives no timeline for analysing the 60,000 samples.

The company expects its liquid funds of EUR 36.8 million to last until the end of the 2027/2028 financial year. The half-year report on 9 March 2027 will be the first chance to see how much of the delayed project and the Fox Foundation contract has turned into revenue towards the EUR 10 million target.

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