Justin Hotard arrived from Intel with no history in the Finnish listed market. Investors have just placed him behind only Marimekko's Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko, and ahead of every other leader they rated.

Hotard took over as Nokia's chief executive on 1 April 2025, arriving from Intel with no record in the Finnish listed market. Fourteen months later he entered the chief executive table of Pörssiyhtiöiden Luottamus & Maine 2026 in second place, rated by 9,195 Finnish retail investors.

Pekka Lundmark, the man he replaced, held second place in the same index in 2023. And second again in 2024. Two people have now held that seat, and investors rated both of them second.

Reputation and Trust Analytics conducted the survey in collaboration with the Finnish Stock Exchange Foundation (Pörssisäätiö) and the Finnish Shareholders' Association (Suomen Osakesäästäjät), ranking listed companies and their chief executives separately. This edition appeared on 21 August, with fieldwork from 11 May to 1 June. Marimekko's Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko was named the best CEO for the third consecutive time. Kone topped the company table with a reputation score of 4.15.

Two chief executives reached the top ten from outside the market, one of them in a single edition

Only the top ten is published, so what follows is visible movement rather than a full ranking.

Hotard and Delorme are the clean cases. Neither could have been ranked before arriving, because the index covers chief executives of Finnish listed companies and both were running divisions elsewhere. Delorme reached third in his third edition. Hotard reached second in his first.

Malinen and Manner do not prove the same thing, and it is worth saying why. Both were already running Finnish listed companies, Outokumpu and Finnair, when earlier editions were fielded. Neither appeared in those top tens, but with roughly 180 sitting chief executives, placing eleventh and placing hundredth look identical from outside. Their earlier standing is unmeasured, not absent.

Nokia is ranked 44th, and its chief executive is ranked second

Nokia scores 3.56 and sits 44th on the company table. Its chief executive sits second. Neste sits 27th; its chief executive sits fifth. Same survey, and in both cases the leader is rated far above the company. 

It is tempting to read this as company reputation being slow and personal reputation being fast. The study's own figures refuse that reading. Neste climbed from 71st to 27th in a single edition, gaining 0.47 points, the largest move in the study. Qt Group fell from 21st to 69th, down 0.51. Company standing can move violently inside one year, so the gap at Nokia is not a story about different speeds. It is a gap whose cause is not in the published data.

A third of Finnish listed leadership is being rated on intent rather than record

The Listeds CEO Index, produced in partnership with SAM Headhunting, counts 186 sitting chief executives on Nasdaq Helsinki and First North Finland. Sixty-eight of them, were appointed in 2025 or later. 

Hotard's second place is what that cohort looks like when investors are asked to rate it. He has held the mandate for fourteen months. Whatever the ranking is measuring, in his case it cannot be measuring a record of delivery, because there is not yet much of one to measure.

For a board, a chief executive's placing is the weaker of the two numbers

For a nomination committee that has just appointed, the useful caution is that a new chief executive's high personal rating is not evidence the hire worked. Hotard entered at second within a year of arriving from another market, and Delorme reached third inside three editions. Neither placing can carry information about performance that has not happened yet.

The company table is the harder number, and it does not seem to follow the chief executive.  Kone was already among the leading companies in 2023, under Henrik Ehrnrooth and before Delorme arrived. Nokia's 44th sits underneath a second-placed leader. Neste's 27th rose by 44 places in the year after a change at the top, which is suggestive and nothing more.