Finland's boards are replacing chief executives briskly, just not at the top of the market, and not with women. The two blanks say more than the twelve appointments do.
In a market as small and closely watched as Finland's, the interest in a quarterly count of chief executives usually lies in the names. This quarter it lies in the gaps. The Listeds CEO Index — Finland for the second quarter of 2026, produced in partnership with SAM Headhunting, records twelve new listed-company chief executives and, around them, a single number that keeps recurring. It is zero. None of the twelve is a woman. And none of the country's largest companies changed its leader at all. It is a second quarter running with the top of the market completely still, a year after more than a third of those same companies replaced their CEO.
The renewal is real, just not at the top
That stillness is not a market slowing down. Below the largest companies, renewal is running at pace. Twenty-five new chief executives took up their roles across Finnish listed companies in the first half of 2026, a rate of about 50 a year against the 43 recorded across all of 2025, and it sits on top of a market that has already renewed roughly a third of its CEOs within eighteen months.
Every one of the twelve second-quarter changes happened below Large Cap: seven in Small Cap, four on First North, one in Mid Cap. The churn is real. It has simply stopped reaching the top.
For a board, that combination is the point. "Many boards have already done the groundwork on a new direction and new focus areas, and where the sitting CEO cannot take the company there, they act," says Leena Hellfors, Managing Director of SAM Headhunting. "Succession has become a continuous capability, not an occasional project."
Across most of the market, that capability is visibly in use. At the very top, it is switched off.
Why the top sits still
The freeze reflects a specific instinct about the largest jobs, and the rest of the quarter shows the same instinct at work in who gets hired. The twelve new CEOs took up their roles at an average age of about 54, roughly four years older than the age at which the sitting population first became chief executives. Half were promoted from inside, and only two of the twelve came from outside Finland. Where boards did move, they reached for the experienced, the internal, the known.
"Leading a listed company is a genuinely different job, and boards look for proven experience and judgement," Hellfors notes. "There is a deep pool of capable, more senior leaders at the moment, so an experienced profile is often the natural choice." The index bears out the gradient: the largest companies appoint their CEOs oldest, and in practice do not hand the seat to a first-time or younger leader, which is understandable.
No women in Q2, but two are starting in Q3
The number that drew the most attention is the one that reads as a step back. Not one of the twelve new CEOs was a woman, against a sitting-population share of just 8.1%, and across the half-year only one of twenty-five appointments went to a woman. A market that consistently buys proven experience over runway narrows its pipeline of younger leaders, and does the same to an already thin pipeline of women.
The picture is not static, though. Because the index tracks the date a CEO starts, the turn is already visible. Two women are recorded as taking up CEO roles in the third quarter, both showing in the data before the quarter has even closed.
When the top does move, it moves as a team
There is a second reason the frozen tier matters: a CEO change is rarely a single change.
Across the twelve companies that did change leader in Q2, management teams saw four arrivals and ten departures in the weeks that followed, concentrated in a few companies rather than spread evenly, but consistent in direction.
Which means the stillness at the top is storing up scale. When one of Finland's largest companies does finally change its CEO, and eventually one will, the board, its investors and its management team should expect not a single appointment but a leadership-team change playing out over the following quarters.
Read the index here
·
5 min read
Finland's boards are replacing chief executives briskly, just not at the top of the market, and not with women. The two blanks say more than the twelve appointments do.
In a market as small and closely watched as Finland's, the interest in a quarterly count of chief executives usually lies in the names. This quarter it lies in the gaps. The Listeds CEO Index — Finland for the second quarter of 2026, produced in partnership with SAM Headhunting, records twelve new listed-company chief executives and, around them, a single number that keeps recurring. It is zero. None of the twelve is a woman. And none of the country's largest companies changed its leader at all. It is a second quarter running with the top of the market completely still, a year after more than a third of those same companies replaced their CEO.
The renewal is real, just not at the top
That stillness is not a market slowing down. Below the largest companies, renewal is running at pace. Twenty-five new chief executives took up their roles across Finnish listed companies in the first half of 2026, a rate of about 50 a year against the 43 recorded across all of 2025, and it sits on top of a market that has already renewed roughly a third of its CEOs within eighteen months.
Every one of the twelve second-quarter changes happened below Large Cap: seven in Small Cap, four on First North, one in Mid Cap. The churn is real. It has simply stopped reaching the top.
For a board, that combination is the point. "Many boards have already done the groundwork on a new direction and new focus areas, and where the sitting CEO cannot take the company there, they act," says Leena Hellfors, Managing Director of SAM Headhunting. "Succession has become a continuous capability, not an occasional project."
Across most of the market, that capability is visibly in use. At the very top, it is switched off.
Why the top sits still
The freeze reflects a specific instinct about the largest jobs, and the rest of the quarter shows the same instinct at work in who gets hired. The twelve new CEOs took up their roles at an average age of about 54, roughly four years older than the age at which the sitting population first became chief executives. Half were promoted from inside, and only two of the twelve came from outside Finland. Where boards did move, they reached for the experienced, the internal, the known.
"Leading a listed company is a genuinely different job, and boards look for proven experience and judgement," Hellfors notes. "There is a deep pool of capable, more senior leaders at the moment, so an experienced profile is often the natural choice." The index bears out the gradient: the largest companies appoint their CEOs oldest, and in practice do not hand the seat to a first-time or younger leader, which is understandable.
No women in Q2, but two are starting in Q3
The number that drew the most attention is the one that reads as a step back. Not one of the twelve new CEOs was a woman, against a sitting-population share of just 8.1%, and across the half-year only one of twenty-five appointments went to a woman. A market that consistently buys proven experience over runway narrows its pipeline of younger leaders, and does the same to an already thin pipeline of women.
The picture is not static, though. Because the index tracks the date a CEO starts, the turn is already visible. Two women are recorded as taking up CEO roles in the third quarter, both showing in the data before the quarter has even closed.
When the top does move, it moves as a team
There is a second reason the frozen tier matters: a CEO change is rarely a single change.
Across the twelve companies that did change leader in Q2, management teams saw four arrivals and ten departures in the weeks that followed, concentrated in a few companies rather than spread evenly, but consistent in direction.
Which means the stillness at the top is storing up scale. When one of Finland's largest companies does finally change its CEO, and eventually one will, the board, its investors and its management team should expect not a single appointment but a leadership-team change playing out over the following quarters.
Read the index here
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