Harri Stavén enters Arvo as investment director

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.