Martela shrinks management team as new CEO takes direct control of portfolio

No Large Cap company changed its chief executive in the first half of 2026. The demergers at UPM and Aspo have produced two new listed-CEO seats anyway — and both went to the parent's own executive, named before the board that will supervise them existed.

Two people will become chief executives of Nasdaq Helsinki-listed companies in the next five months. Neither was recruited. Neither was chosen by the board of the company they will run, because at the time they were appointed that board had not been elected and the company did not yet exist.

Tuija Suur-Hamari becomes President and CEO of WISA Group Plc when UPM's plywood demerger completes, expected on or about 31 October, with trading due to start on 2 November. Matti-Mikael Koskinen becomes CEO of ESL Shipping Group Plc when Aspo's demerger completes on 31 December, with trading expected on or about 4 January 2027

Both are internal. Both were named by the demerging parent's board. And both arrive in a market where, on the Listeds CEO Index — Finland, produced in partnership with SAM Headhunting, the largest Finnish listed companies did not appoint a single new chief executive in either quarter of the first half of 2026.

Two names, both from inside

Suur-Hamari has run UPM Plywood since 1 November 2025 at the latest, on an appointment announced on 17 April 2025. She joined UPM from Wihuri, where she had been Managing Director of Wipak Oy since 2016, and before that was President and CEO of Kotkamills Oy. Born in 1969, she holds a Master's degree in engineering from Helsinki University of Technology. WISA will be her first listed-company chief executive role, and it arrives almost exactly a year after she joined UPM.

Koskinen has been Managing Director of ESL Shipping Ltd since 1 May 2013, appointed at the age of 41 from Meriaura, where he had been Managing Director since 2007. Thirteen years in the same operating role, and the company he runs is being listed around him.

Neither is a first-time chief executive. Both are first-time listed-company chief executives, and neither reached the seat through a search.

Against a market that stopped hiring at the top

The index recorded 12 new CEO starts in the second quarter of 2026 and 25 across the first half, an annualised pace of about 50 against 44 for all of 2025. Every one of the Q2 starts happened below Large Cap: seven Small Cap, four First North, one Mid Cap. Large Cap recorded zero changes for a second consecutive quarter, a year after more than a third of that tier replaced its CEO.

Set the demerger appointments against that and the pattern is consistent rather than contrary. External hires were 50% of Q2 starts, or 60% of the ten starts that actually changed the leader. The two demerger appointments are internal promotions, the share of external hires on seats created by corporate structure so far is zero. Where boards did hire in Q2, the average age at start was about 54, roughly four years above the age at which the sitting population first took the role. A 1969 birth year puts Suur-Hamari at 56 or 57 on day one; Koskinen, 41 in March 2013, will be in his mid-fifties.

So the demerger wave is not widening the pool. It is creating seats and filling them with the profile Finnish boards were already buying.

One thing it does change: Suur-Hamari will be one of a small number of women running a Nasdaq Helsinki-listed company. Women held 8.1% of the 186 sitting CEO roles at 30 June, and one of the 25 first-half starts. The CEO index already records two women taking up CEO roles in the third quarter; WISA adds a fourth-quarter one, and it arrives by demerger rather than by succession.

Around forty of those names belong to a single company each. Citycon has the only cyber committee on the exchange, and last year it did not meet.

Citycon's board has a Cyber Committee. It is the only one on Nasdaq Helsinki. The company's own governance disclosure records that in 2025, the Cyber Committee did not convene. Its Audit and Governance Committee met four times that year. Its Nomination and Remuneration Committee met seven.

A cyber committee is a defensible answer to a real exposure for a listed property owner. What stands out is that no other Helsinki-listed board has formalised the same risk in the same way, or in many cases at all.

35+ committee names belong to a single company each

Citycon is not the only board with a committee nobody else has. Raisio established an M&A Committee at its 2025 annual general meeting, chaired by board chair Arto Tiitinen. Orion runs an R&D Committee, chaired by Hilpi Rautelin, the only one of its kind in the Finnish listed market. Revenio has an Integration Committee. GRK Infra has a Tender and Project Committee. HKFoods runs a Working Committee and a Special Committee. Fortum has folded technology and investment into one body, and YIT has done the same with investment and projects.

Audit and remuneration still do almost all of the work

Across 184 Helsinki-listed companies, 127 have at least one board committee. Fifty-seven have none. Those 127 boards run 270 committees between them.

The functions concentrate tightly. Audit appears in 122 committee mandates, remuneration in 71, and people, personnel or human resources in 59. Nomination or governance appears in 26, sustainability in 14, risk in 13.

Another 11 committees use "Compensation" instead of remuneration, so a body explicitly charged with pay appears in 82 of the 270 — and that still excludes the 17 Personnel, People and Human Resources committees holding the same mandate without naming pay.

The names do not concentrate at all. After normalising for capitalisation and ampersands, those 270 committees carry 60 distinct labels, and 38 of them are used by exactly one company.

Most of that variety is cosmetic. People and Sustainability. Sustainability and Personnel. Sustainability and HR. Remuneration and HR. HR and Compensation. People and Compensation. Human Resources and Remuneration. Seven labels, one mandate.