A family transfer twenty years in the making moved 12.18% of Sanoma into a single company. Eight days later, the body that proposes Sanoma's next board had two pension insurers sitting on it — and the family branch that used to hold half its seats held one.
On 9 September 2026, Sanoma disclosed that Robin Langenskiöld and Rafaela Seppälä had transferred their entire shareholdings — 19,928,117 shares, 12.18% of the company — to RR & Co Ab, a newly formed vehicle owned by their children and grandchildren. The price was €7.2428 a share, €144,335,366 in total, executed on Nasdaq Helsinki. The stated purpose was to hold the family's stake under one roof and to avoid, in the filing's words, "avoidable fragmentation of ownership".
Read as a €144 million exit, the trade is misread. Nothing left the family.
The staircase and the cliff
The two siblings arrived at the same destination by opposite routes.
Robin Langenskiöld held 12,273,371 Sanoma shares in July 2006 and 12,273,371 in August 2026 — the same figure in all 239 monthly snapshots of the Listeds register. His percentage drifted from 7.70% to 7.50%, but that was dilution, not disposal. His only change of position came in March 2014, when Antti Herlin added 2,706,979 shares in a single month and moved him from second-largest shareholder to third.
His sister began at 12,273,370 shares — one share fewer, the signature of a divided inheritance. Her holding then fell four times, and each fall is matched, to the share, by increases in holders carrying her family's names:
Month | Seppälä | Matched increases |
Mar 2008 | −600,000 | Alex Noyer +300,000 · Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin +300,000 |
Dec 2011 | −1,400,000 | Alex Noyer +700,000 · Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin +700,000 |
Mar 2023 | −1,246,880 | Alex Noyer +623,440 · four Bernardin-Aubouin holders, +155,860 each |
May 2023 | −1,371,744 | Alex Noyer +685,872 · four Bernardin-Aubouin holders, +171,468 each |
Four transfers, 4,618,624 shares, each split into exact halves between two branches of descendants — and 12,273,370 less 4,618,624 leaves 7,654,746, the holding she transferred in September. A register records positions rather than counterparties, so the pairing is inference rather than disclosed fact. It is a strong one: a seller's decrease matching two buyers' increases to the single share, four times across fifteen years, is not a market coincidence.
So Seppälä handed her stake down across eighteen years and five tranches. Langenskiöld handed his down in one afternoon, after two decades of not moving a share.
What the consolidation was fixing
By August 2026 this one branch of the family occupied eleven separate lines of Sanoma's register, holding 28,241,098 shares between them — 17.24% of the company, spread across three generations and four surnames. The September transfer gathered 12.18% of that into a single vehicle. The remaining 5.06% stays where it was, held individually by descendants.
That is the argument the filing makes without spelling it out. The fragmentation it sets out to prevent is visible in the register, name by name, and it is the direct product of eighteen years of orderly succession. Handing a stake down in installments preserves a family's economics and slowly dismantles its ability to act as one shareholder. RR & Co Ab is the correction — and the reason the larger position, Langenskiöld's untouched 12,273,371 shares, was never handed down at all until a vehicle existed to receive it.
The seat changes
Finland runs board nominations through a shareholders' nomination committee: a body of large owners, sitting outside the board, that proposes the board's size, composition and remuneration to the Annual General Meeting.
On that basis the committee that prepared the proposals for Sanoma's 2026 AGM, published on 13 March 2026, had four members: Juhani Mäkinen for the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Antti Herlin for Holding Manutas, and Langenskiöld and Seppälä in their own right. Two of the four seats belonged to one family branch. No pension insurer had a seat.
Once the shares moved, neither sibling owned any. On 17 September 2026 Sanoma disclosed that both had stepped down, and that under the committee's charter the next largest shareholders as of 31 May 2026 — Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company and Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company — were entitled to appoint representatives. The committee additionally invited RR & Co Ab, as Sanoma's new third-largest shareholder, to appoint a member for the rest of the term.
The committee now reads:
Member | Represents |
Juhani Mäkinen | Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation |
Antti Herlin | Holding Manutas |
Hanna Kaskela | Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company |
Annika Ekman | Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company |
Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin | RR & Co Ab |
Four seats became five. The family branch went from two of four to one of five. Two of the five now belong to pension insurers, in a committee that had none when it drafted this year's board proposals.
The seat that remains is held by Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin, one of the two descendants whose register lines grew in step with Seppälä's, in every one of the four transfers from 2008 onward. The installment plan produced the person who now represents the consolidated stake.
Two register lines, One committee seat
Nothing here was a loss of control in the ownership sense, and none of it was forced. It is the ordinary arithmetic of a charter that allocates seats by register position: consolidate two lines into one, and you consolidate two seats into one. The shareholders' nomination committee appointed on the register as at 31 May 2027 will present its proposals for the following year's AGM in January 2028. Sebastian Langenskiöld, named in the transaction filing as a person closely associated with RR & Co Ab, continues to sit on the board itself.
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A family transfer twenty years in the making moved 12.18% of Sanoma into a single company. Eight days later, the body that proposes Sanoma's next board had two pension insurers sitting on it — and the family branch that used to hold half its seats held one.
On 9 September 2026, Sanoma disclosed that Robin Langenskiöld and Rafaela Seppälä had transferred their entire shareholdings — 19,928,117 shares, 12.18% of the company — to RR & Co Ab, a newly formed vehicle owned by their children and grandchildren. The price was €7.2428 a share, €144,335,366 in total, executed on Nasdaq Helsinki. The stated purpose was to hold the family's stake under one roof and to avoid, in the filing's words, "avoidable fragmentation of ownership".
Read as a €144 million exit, the trade is misread. Nothing left the family.
The staircase and the cliff
The two siblings arrived at the same destination by opposite routes.
Robin Langenskiöld held 12,273,371 Sanoma shares in July 2006 and 12,273,371 in August 2026 — the same figure in all 239 monthly snapshots of the Listeds register. His percentage drifted from 7.70% to 7.50%, but that was dilution, not disposal. His only change of position came in March 2014, when Antti Herlin added 2,706,979 shares in a single month and moved him from second-largest shareholder to third.
His sister began at 12,273,370 shares — one share fewer, the signature of a divided inheritance. Her holding then fell four times, and each fall is matched, to the share, by increases in holders carrying her family's names:
Month | Seppälä | Matched increases |
Mar 2008 | −600,000 | Alex Noyer +300,000 · Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin +300,000 |
Dec 2011 | −1,400,000 | Alex Noyer +700,000 · Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin +700,000 |
Mar 2023 | −1,246,880 | Alex Noyer +623,440 · four Bernardin-Aubouin holders, +155,860 each |
May 2023 | −1,371,744 | Alex Noyer +685,872 · four Bernardin-Aubouin holders, +171,468 each |
Four transfers, 4,618,624 shares, each split into exact halves between two branches of descendants — and 12,273,370 less 4,618,624 leaves 7,654,746, the holding she transferred in September. A register records positions rather than counterparties, so the pairing is inference rather than disclosed fact. It is a strong one: a seller's decrease matching two buyers' increases to the single share, four times across fifteen years, is not a market coincidence.
So Seppälä handed her stake down across eighteen years and five tranches. Langenskiöld handed his down in one afternoon, after two decades of not moving a share.
What the consolidation was fixing
By August 2026 this one branch of the family occupied eleven separate lines of Sanoma's register, holding 28,241,098 shares between them — 17.24% of the company, spread across three generations and four surnames. The September transfer gathered 12.18% of that into a single vehicle. The remaining 5.06% stays where it was, held individually by descendants.
That is the argument the filing makes without spelling it out. The fragmentation it sets out to prevent is visible in the register, name by name, and it is the direct product of eighteen years of orderly succession. Handing a stake down in installments preserves a family's economics and slowly dismantles its ability to act as one shareholder. RR & Co Ab is the correction — and the reason the larger position, Langenskiöld's untouched 12,273,371 shares, was never handed down at all until a vehicle existed to receive it.
The seat changes
Finland runs board nominations through a shareholders' nomination committee: a body of large owners, sitting outside the board, that proposes the board's size, composition and remuneration to the Annual General Meeting.
On that basis the committee that prepared the proposals for Sanoma's 2026 AGM, published on 13 March 2026, had four members: Juhani Mäkinen for the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Antti Herlin for Holding Manutas, and Langenskiöld and Seppälä in their own right. Two of the four seats belonged to one family branch. No pension insurer had a seat.
Once the shares moved, neither sibling owned any. On 17 September 2026 Sanoma disclosed that both had stepped down, and that under the committee's charter the next largest shareholders as of 31 May 2026 — Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company and Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company — were entitled to appoint representatives. The committee additionally invited RR & Co Ab, as Sanoma's new third-largest shareholder, to appoint a member for the rest of the term.
The committee now reads:
Member | Represents |
Juhani Mäkinen | Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation |
Antti Herlin | Holding Manutas |
Hanna Kaskela | Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company |
Annika Ekman | Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company |
Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin | RR & Co Ab |
Four seats became five. The family branch went from two of four to one of five. Two of the five now belong to pension insurers, in a committee that had none when it drafted this year's board proposals.
The seat that remains is held by Lorna Bernardin-Aubouin, one of the two descendants whose register lines grew in step with Seppälä's, in every one of the four transfers from 2008 onward. The installment plan produced the person who now represents the consolidated stake.
Two register lines, One committee seat
Nothing here was a loss of control in the ownership sense, and none of it was forced. It is the ordinary arithmetic of a charter that allocates seats by register position: consolidate two lines into one, and you consolidate two seats into one. The shareholders' nomination committee appointed on the register as at 31 May 2027 will present its proposals for the following year's AGM in January 2028. Sebastian Langenskiöld, named in the transaction filing as a person closely associated with RR & Co Ab, continues to sit on the board itself.
Editor's note, 25 September 2026, 19:56 EEST: This article has been updated to correct two points.
1. Section "A precedent two lines up the register"
The section below has been removed because it misstated the ownership history of Holding Manutas Oy's stake in Sanoma.
Earlier:
A precedent two lines up the register
This is the second time in three years that a roughly 12% personal holding in Sanoma has been re-papered into a company. Antti Herlin built his stake from 100,000 shares in 2006 to 19,816,800 by March 2023. That April, his name dropped out of the top holders list and Holding Manutas Oy appeared in second place with 19,785,000 shares. The 31,800-share difference has sat under his own name ever since, unchanged. Sanoma's second- and third-largest positions are therefore now both family holdings inside corporate wrappers, created three years apart by the same logic.
2. Final paragraph
Earlier:
The next committee is appointed on the register as at 31 May 2027, and its proposals for that year's AGM are due to the Board in January.
Corrected:
The shareholders' nomination committee appointed on the register as at 31 May 2027 will present its proposals for the following year's AGM in January 2028.
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