Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company was named Defence Owner of the Year 2026 on Monday evening at Valkoinen Sali in Helsinki, at the first Listeds Investor Event – Defence. The award is new, and so is the thing it measures. Not how much an institution owns, but what it has done with the ownership.

Finland has prizes for companies and prizes for chief executives. Owners have gone unrewarded.

“In Finland we reward companies and executives, but not owners. We wanted to create a category that measures an owner's actions: where the capital went, and what was done with the ownership”

The jury scored what Ilmarinen did, not what it held

The jury was chaired by Tiina Olkkonen, founder and chair of IR Partners, and included Sanna Andersson of Euroclear Nordics, Kyösti Jurvelin of Talouselämä and Klaus Ilmonen of Hannes Snellman.

Three things decided it. Ilmarinen anchored Reaktor's listing earlier this year and is now the company's largest institutional owner. It joined a funding round for the unlisted ICEYE. And it sits on the shareholders' nomination boards of roughly 40 Finnish listed companies every year, which is a direct lever on who ends up in those boardrooms.

“Defence capability is not created by public defence spending alone. Behind it you need competitive companies, innovation and patient private capital. In a changed security environment, institutional investors have an important role in making sure that defence and dual-use innovations born in Finland have the conditions to grow into internationally successful companies. That is why we wanted to reward an owner that does not merely invest in the sector but, through its own actions, is helping to build it.”

That last point is the one the jury kept returning to. Defence and dual-use companies are growing quickly, and the competence their boards need is moving just as fast.

Eight companies pitched, five of them listed

Gofore, Kesla, Savox Communications and Aspocomp Group, all on Nasdaq Helsinki, and Betolar from Nasdaq First North pitched the defence and dual-use side of their businesses to a room of professional investors. Audicin, Njord and AGATE Sensors followed in the growth round with three minutes each.

Martti Wallin, venture partner at Sparkmind Capital and a past chairman of the Association of Finnish Defence and Aerospace Industries, opened the evening with a conversation on what investors and leaders get wrong about defence.