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.
The seat is created by a structural vote, not a succession decision
Under the Finnish Corporate Governance Code, appointing the chief executive is the board's own duty. A demerger inverts the sequence, unavoidably. UPM announced Suur-Hamari as WISA's President and CEO on 29 April. Tapio Korpeinen as chair, Mats Nordlander as deputy chair, and Sakari Ahdekivi, Frank Herrmann, Nina Kiviranta and Emmanuelle Picard were elected as board members by UPM's extraordinary general meeting six weeks later, on 31 August. Aspo's board intended that Rolf Jansson will be elected as Chair of the Board and Matti-Mikael Koskinen as CEO of ESL Shipping Group on 3 August; ESL Shipping Group's own board will not be elected until the extraordinary general meeting on 7 December, four months after the fact.
Shareholders in both cases vote on a structure. The chief executive comes attached to it.
That is not a criticism of any of the people named — there is no other way to staff a company that does not yet exist.
Valmet is the one that would break the freeze
WISA and ESL Shipping Group are not Large Cap businesses. WISA reported EUR 409 million in plywood sales in 2025; ESL Shipping Group generated EUR 178.4 million over the twelve months to June 2026, and Telko Group EUR 294.6 million.
Valmet is a different order. Its board announced on 24 July that it would review separating Biomaterial Solutions and Services from Process Performance Solutions into two listed companies. Process Performance Solutions runs at roughly EUR 1.7 billion in annual net sales after the Severn acquisition, with close to 70% of that now outside pulp and paper. Group net sales were about EUR 5.2 billion in 2025, leaving Biomaterial Solutions and Services as much the larger of the two, though Valmet has not disclosed a standalone figure for it in this release. Chair Pekka Vauramo said the board would proceed only if separation proved "clearly in the best interests of our shareholders." An update is due no later than the full-year 2026 results.
If it happens, one board decision produces two Large Cap-scale chief executive seats in a tier that recorded no CEO change at all in the first half of 2026. No leadership has been named for either. President and CEO Thomas Hinnerskov runs both today.
There is a second thing to watch at Valmet. CFO Katri Hokkanen leaves at the end of September; her successor Pia Aaltonen-Forsell arrives at the latest at the end of January 2027, and no interim arrangement has been disclosed. The company is weighing a two-company split across that gap.
The seat nobody has named
Aspo's demerger creates one more chief executive question than it answers. Rolf Jansson has been Aspo's CEO and, since 23 January 2026, also Managing Director of Telko. He is intended to be elected chair of ESL Shipping Group's board. Who leads Telko Group Plc, the continuing company, renamed, is not disclosed in the demerger plan. The prospectus is due in November.
What to watch
Three things follow for boards and nomination committees.
A demerger is a leadership decision at least a year before it is a market event. The CEO, the leadership team and the board of a company that will not trade until 2027 were all settled in the summer of 2026, and shareholders approved them inside a structural vote.
The route does not widen the pipeline. Every demerger-created seat named so far has gone to an executive already inside the parent, at the age profile Finnish boards have been favouring anyway.
And the counting matters. These starts land in the Q4 2026 and Q1 2027 CEO Index, not the current one, which means the index will register CEO appointments that no board actually searched for. Whether Valmet adds two Large Cap entries to that count is the open question of the next two quarters.
·
5 min read
Explore and follow profiles from this article to get timely updates:
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.
The seat is created by a structural vote, not a succession decision
Under the Finnish Corporate Governance Code, appointing the chief executive is the board's own duty. A demerger inverts the sequence, unavoidably. UPM announced Suur-Hamari as WISA's President and CEO on 29 April. Tapio Korpeinen as chair, Mats Nordlander as deputy chair, and Sakari Ahdekivi, Frank Herrmann, Nina Kiviranta and Emmanuelle Picard were elected as board members by UPM's extraordinary general meeting six weeks later, on 31 August. Aspo's board intended that Rolf Jansson will be elected as Chair of the Board and Matti-Mikael Koskinen as CEO of ESL Shipping Group on 3 August; ESL Shipping Group's own board will not be elected until the extraordinary general meeting on 7 December, four months after the fact.
Shareholders in both cases vote on a structure. The chief executive comes attached to it.
That is not a criticism of any of the people named — there is no other way to staff a company that does not yet exist.
Valmet is the one that would break the freeze
WISA and ESL Shipping Group are not Large Cap businesses. WISA reported EUR 409 million in plywood sales in 2025; ESL Shipping Group generated EUR 178.4 million over the twelve months to June 2026, and Telko Group EUR 294.6 million.
Valmet is a different order. Its board announced on 24 July that it would review separating Biomaterial Solutions and Services from Process Performance Solutions into two listed companies. Process Performance Solutions runs at roughly EUR 1.7 billion in annual net sales after the Severn acquisition, with close to 70% of that now outside pulp and paper. Group net sales were about EUR 5.2 billion in 2025, leaving Biomaterial Solutions and Services as much the larger of the two, though Valmet has not disclosed a standalone figure for it in this release. Chair Pekka Vauramo said the board would proceed only if separation proved "clearly in the best interests of our shareholders." An update is due no later than the full-year 2026 results.
If it happens, one board decision produces two Large Cap-scale chief executive seats in a tier that recorded no CEO change at all in the first half of 2026. No leadership has been named for either. President and CEO Thomas Hinnerskov runs both today.
There is a second thing to watch at Valmet. CFO Katri Hokkanen leaves at the end of September; her successor Pia Aaltonen-Forsell arrives at the latest at the end of January 2027, and no interim arrangement has been disclosed. The company is weighing a two-company split across that gap.
The seat nobody has named
Aspo's demerger creates one more chief executive question than it answers. Rolf Jansson has been Aspo's CEO and, since 23 January 2026, also Managing Director of Telko. He is intended to be elected chair of ESL Shipping Group's board. Who leads Telko Group Plc, the continuing company, renamed, is not disclosed in the demerger plan. The prospectus is due in November.
What to watch
Three things follow for boards and nomination committees.
A demerger is a leadership decision at least a year before it is a market event. The CEO, the leadership team and the board of a company that will not trade until 2027 were all settled in the summer of 2026, and shareholders approved them inside a structural vote.
The route does not widen the pipeline. Every demerger-created seat named so far has gone to an executive already inside the parent, at the age profile Finnish boards have been favouring anyway.
And the counting matters. These starts land in the Q4 2026 and Q1 2027 CEO Index, not the current one, which means the index will register CEO appointments that no board actually searched for. Whether Valmet adds two Large Cap entries to that count is the open question of the next two quarters.
Follow moves like this on the Listeds Executive Intelligence Platform.
Nordic Listed Leaders Board Programme
Learn board work from
the people who do it.
Harvard cases, coaching and open dialogue with people who sit on and work with boards of Finnish publicly listed companies.
Next cohort
19 November 2026
Then January, April, August and October 2027
Latest on Listeds
