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Executive appointments

Leaders

Lars Bell arrives at the end of SSH's rebuild. The share is up 49.5% in five days.

Sep 9, 2026

Since January, SSH Communications Security has lowered its sales outlook, watched an incoming chief financial officer withdraw before her start date, and completed a tender offer on its convertible capital securities. Lars Bell's appointment as chief executive, announced 3 September and effective 1 October, is the most visible event in that sequence. It is not the first.

Read on its own, a planned CEO succession looks orderly. Read against the year behind it, it is the last announced piece of a rebuild that began eight months earlier.

The share price read it the other way round. Most of that sequence passed with barely a mark: the three CFO events moved the share −2.2%, +0.5% and −0.5%. Then, in the five sessions to 7 September, SSH's share (SSH1V, Nasdaq Helsinki) rose from EUR 1.786 to EUR 2.67, up 49.5%, on 569,004 shares against August's 403,172 across 21 sessions.

Three CFO plans, and a quarter with EBITDA negative

SSH lowered its 2025 net sales outlook on 2 January. Full-year 2025 net sales came in down 2.4%; Q1 2026 turned EBITDA negative; Q2 revenue recovered to EUR 5.7 million, up 6.8% year on year, while EBITDA was down 40.7%.

The finance seat moved three times in three months. Maria Alahuhta was appointed CFO on 2 April, her start date was brought forward to 1 October, and on 12 June SSH disclosed she would not take up the role. Cristian Arias was appointed on 7 July, starting 1 October, the same day Bell begins.

What the market paid for

Date	Event	Close (EUR)	Move	Volume
15 Jan	Two New Partnerships with COMIT Corporation in Vietnam and ChyunYao in Taiwan.	3.47	+24.4%	607,544
17 Feb	FY2025 results	2.41	−6.9%	176,389
2 Apr	Alahuhta appointed CFO	2.19	−2.2%	33,058
12 Jun	Alahuhta withdraws	2.10	+0.5%	40,611
7 Jul	Arias appointed CFO	1.98	−0.5%	38,468
17 Jul	CEO retirement + Q2	2.035	−8.7%	39,444
3 Sep	Bell appointed CEO	2.11	+11.1%	98,535
7 Sep	Bank selects PrivX for Zero Trust	2.67	+18.7%	209,389

Three CFO events: −2.2%, +0.5%, −0.5%. None traded an average day's volume for the year (55,597 shares). On the day SSH disclosed that an incoming CFO would not take up the role, the share rose half a per cent on 40,611 shares.

The disclosures that did move it were the outlook cut on 2 January (−7.9%), the full-year results on 17 February (−6.9%), and the CEO seat. The 17 July release, which carried the retirement of Rami Raulas alongside the Q2 figures, took the share down 8.7% that day, and 18.2% from the 16 July close to the 23 July close.

The largest single day of the September run came two sessions after the appointment was public, on 7 September, +18.7%, as one of the world's largest banks selected SSH Communications Security's PrivX solution to implement Zero Trust with Zero Standing Access.

Same buyer, different product

Bell comes from Omada A/S, where he was Chief Customer Officer and, from November 2025 to April 2026, interim chief executive. Before that: chief executive of Pedab Denmark, and long tenures at Microsoft, HP and IBM: more than twenty-five years in enterprise software.

His discipline is Identity Governance and Administration. SSH sells Zero Trust privileged access and quantum-safe network encryption. The two compete for the same security budget and often reach the same buyer, but they are not the same product.

What to watch

Bell and Arias both start on 1 October, which makes SSH's Q3 report the first disclosure a rebuilt executive team owns rather than inherits. It is also the first test of whether the Q2 revenue recovery survives these changes.

Leaders

Teemu Kokko moves from Arvo's board to its chief executive's chair

Sep 7, 2026

Kokko becomes deputy CEO in December and chief executive on 1 April 2027, after five years on Arvo's board of directors. The nomination committee that selected him sits under the supervisory board, one level above that board; Arvo has not disclosed whether he keeps his seat.

On 1 September 2026, Arvo Sijoitusosuuskunta released as inside information that Teemu Kokko will become its chief executive. He starts as deputy CEO in early December 2026 and takes over on 1 April 2027.

Kokko joins from the insurance underwriter Arch Underwriters Europe Oy, where he is regional director. He has also been a member of Arvo's board of directors since 2021.

The committee sits one level up

Arvo is a cooperative. Its highest governing body is not the board of directors but the supervisory board which represents the members, has 18 to 30 seats, serves three-year terms and meets roughly three times a year. That body appoints a nomination committee from among its own members.

When Jari Pirinen announced on 8 September 2025 that he would retire in spring 2027 on turning 66, Arvo said management succession planning sat with that committee, and supervisory board chair Tuomo Tamminen said it would report on progress later.

So the body that selected Kokko is not the board Kokko sits on. It is drawn from a members' organ and answers to the members.

In a listed limited company there is no such layer. The board appoints the chief executive itself. That is the comparison for any Finnish board weighing one of its own directors as a successor: Arvo can point to a committee above the board; a listed board has to show its process instead.

Two things Arvo has not disclosed. The release does not say whether Kokko remains a member of the board of directors once he becomes deputy CEO in December or chief executive in April. Nor does it say how the board handled his candidacy, he has been a director throughout the period covered by the succession process announced in September 2025.

Arvo's board was re-elected in February 2026 and comprises Marjo Kolehmainen as chair (a director since 2018, chair since 2022), Mika Kiljala as vice chair (director since 2017), Juha Laakkonen and Kokko (both since 2021), and Titta Mantila (since 2024).

The handover runs 19 months end to end

Retirement flagged in September 2025. Successor named in September 2026. Four months as deputy chief executive from early December 2026. Handover on 1 April 2027. Pirinen then moves to special duties on the board of directors from that date, takes accrued leave, and retires on 31 May 2027.

That is a longer and more pre-committed sequence than Helsinki practice, where chief executive changes are often announced with an interim in place and a search still running.

The numbers he inherits, and the transaction inside them

Arvo reported group operating profit of EUR 8.5 million for the first half of 2026, against EUR 6.5 million a year earlier, and a net result of EUR 7.0 million against EUR 2.7 million. Annualised return on invested capital was 17.0 per cent, against 10.3 per cent. Equity per unit rose to EUR 123 from EUR 117.

Most of the step-up traces to one position. Arvo sold its entire holding of 896,806 shares in Nasdaq Stockholm-listed HANZA AB in March 2026 for a capital gain of approximately EUR 6.9 million. It had taken those shares in 2025 as part of the price for exiting Leden Group — a Finnish seller accepting equity in a Swedish listed acquirer, then realising it inside twelve months. That structure is the more transferable lesson in the half-year for anyone selling a Finnish asset across the Gulf of Bothnia.

Underlying performance was already ahead of target before the disposal. Parent-company return on invested capital was 10.1 per cent for full-year 2025, which the company said clearly exceeded the board's return target, and the board proposed a per-unit interest of EUR 5.77, which Arvo characterised as about 60 per cent of the year's earnings. At the end of 2025 the cooperative had 22,373 members and 814,470 units.

The units closed at EUR 84.20 on 3 September 2026. Equity per unit was EUR 123 at 30 June 2026. On those two dates the units traded roughly 32 per cent below reported equity per unit — a gap readers should weigh themselves, and one measured across a two-month interval rather than at a single date. Inderes rates the units Accumulate as at 21 August 2026; Arvo is a commissioned research client of Inderes, and its coverage should be read with that in mind.

The mandate points one way, the reported share the other

Tamminen set the direction in the appointment release:

"Under Teemu's leadership, we believe Arvo's investment operations will develop further and the share of direct investments will grow."

He paired it with a constraint in the same release:

"We continue to regard it as important that Arvo remains a stable payer of the per-unit interest, as in previous years."

Grow the illiquid share; keep the cash distribution steady. Those two pull against each other, and holding both is the substance of the job.

The measured direct share has been moving the other way. Direct investments were 47 per cent of the portfolio at fair value at the end of 2025, up from 44 per cent a year earlier. At 30 June 2026 they were 40 per cent, against 45 per cent at 30 June 2025.

The profit and the fall have a common cause: the HANZA exit produced the gain and removed a direct holding. So the growth mandate starts from a lower base than the 2025 figures suggest.

Deal activity has continued. Arvo took a minority stake in bus operator Wiimax Oy alongside Wiimax's acquisition of J.M. Eskelisen Lapin Linjat Oy, and joined a Helmet Capital-led investor group in Oskutuote Oy, a wild bird food specialist.

Why it matters beyond one cooperative

Arvo listed its units on Nasdaq First North Growth Market Finland, Cooperatives segment, on 20 June 2023 under the ticker ARVOSK — the first cooperative units listed on Nasdaq's Nordic markets. It is a listed issuer with a members' register the size of a mid-cap shareholder base and a governance architecture most Finnish listed companies gave up decades ago.

Three questions for any company announcing a new chief executive.

Who runs the process, and does that body sit above the candidate or beside him? Arvo can point one level up.
What gets disclosed at the moment of appointment? Whether the incoming chief executive keeps a board seat, and how his candidacy was handled, are reasonable things for a market to be told at announcement rather than to reconstruct afterwards.
What is the mandate measured against? Kokko is asked to grow direct investments while keeping the per-unit interest stable, from a direct share that fell in the most recent reported period, after a disposal that produced the profit he inherits credit for.

Leaders

Two new listed CEOs, no search, no external hire

Sep 2, 2026

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.

Leaders

Nordea appoints four leaders, three to the Group Leadership Team

Aug 28, 2026

Nordea's 19 August release names Group Leadership Team membership four times and leaves it out once. Asked whether the omission was deliberate, the bank confirmed to Listeds that the incoming Chief Compliance Officer will not be a member.

Nordea announced four management changes on 19 August 2026. Two fill Group Leadership Team seats in the bank's two biggest customer units. The other two lead Risk and Compliance, which merge into one function on 1 January 2027. All four leaders come from inside the bank, and none of the appointments is final: The appointments are pending regulatory approval* the release states.

Personal Banking goes to the man who ran it in Sweden for six years

Per Långsved, currently Head of Nordea Life & Pension, becomes Head of Personal Banking and a member of the Group Leadership Team on 1 November 2026. He joined Nordea in 2019 as Head of Personal Banking Sweden and Country Senior Executive and held that role until he took over Nordea Life & Pension on 1 March 2025

So the appointment is closer to a return than a first attempt: six years running the same business in one market, then approximately eighteen months in life and pensions, now the business again across four. The scale changes even though the subject matter does not. Chief executive Frank Vang-Jensen put it in growth terms: "Per is an experienced growth driver with a strong focus on customer focus, collaboration and inspiring leadership."

He replaces Sara Mella, who is stepping down from operational roles to embark on the next phase of her career as a non-executive after seven years leading Personal Banking. "I would like to extend a warm thank you to Sara for her valuable contributions and dedication," Vang-Jensen said.

A twenty-year insider takes Business Banking, and leaves a Norwegian seat open

Randi Marjamaa, currently Head of Personal Banking Norway and Country Senior Executive, becomes Deputy Head of Business Banking and a member of the Group Leadership Team on 1 January 2027 at the latest. She joined Nordea in 2006. Twenty years of tenure carries a different signal than a recent lateral hire.

"Randi brings a strong business understanding and a dedicated Norway focus into the Group Leadership Team," Vang-Jensen said. The release names no successor in Norway. It also does not name a Head of Business Banking, or say why the unit is getting a deputy head now.

The compliance chief loses the seat

Group Risk and Group Compliance will merge on 1 January 2027, and Nordea's account is efficiency with a safeguard attached: "This will strengthen the coordination between the units, drive efficiency by leveraging shared technology and data capabilities to enhance risk oversight, while preserving the independent second-line role of Compliance". Nothing in the release explains why the merger is happening now.

Mark Kandborg, Chief Risk Officer, heads the new Group Risk & Compliance unit and continues on the Group Leadership Team. Nahale Ståhl Hallengren, currently Head of Group Financial Crime Compliance, becomes Chief Compliance Officer on the same date, reporting to the Chief Risk Officer and Head of Group Risk & Compliance, with reporting lines also to the Group CEO and the Board of Directors.

Read the two announcements together and the structural point is visible in what the release does and does not say. Jamie Graham will step down as Chief Compliance Officer and a member of the Group Leadership Team as of 31 December 2026. His successor is named as Chief Compliance Officer with reporting lines, and not as a Group Leadership Team member.

Asked whether that was deliberate, Nordea confirmed it in a written reply to Listeds on 28 August: "Nahale Ståhl Hallengren will as Chief Compliance Officer not be a member of the Group Leadership Team. She will be reporting to the Chief Risk Officer and Head of Group Risk & Compliance, with reporting lines also to the Group CEO and the Board of Directors as regulations require." Compliance keeps the escalation route a second line of defence needs when it reports to the first. It no longer sits in the room where senior management meets.

Graham advises for three months after the merger takes effect

Graham leaves the Group Leadership Team on 31 December 2026 for family reasons and stays on as senior adviser until 31 March 2027, giving the merged function about three months of overlap across year-end reporting. "I want to thank Jamie for his broad competence and strong commitment during the past ten years," Vang-Jensen said.

The board settled in March before management changed in August

At the annual general meeting on 24 March 2026, shareholders approved a dividend of EUR 0.96 per share for 2025 and authorised a mid-year dividend of about half of first-half net profit, capped at EUR 3bn. Sir Stephen Hester was re-elected chair, eight shareholder-elected members were re-elected, and Simon Cooper, formerly of HSBC and Standard Chartered, was newly elected. Lene Skole was elected vice chair at the statutory board meeting the same day.

Governance was settled first and management reorganised underneath it, with the executive changes taking effect between November 2026 and January 2027.

The changes land on solid earnings, not a weak quarter

First-quarter operating profit rose 2% to EUR 1,634M, even after the bank booked EUR 190M of restructuring costs as items affecting comparability, EUR 168M of it staff costs Total operating income fell 2% in that quarter, to EUR 2,910M, then rose 4% in the second quarter to EUR 3,032M. Return on equity was 15.4% in the first quarter and 15.9 per cent in the second, against 15.7 and 16.2 per cent a year earlier. Six days before the management announcement, the board confirmed to pay a mid-year dividend of EUR 0.34 per share on 13 August 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Paying out while restructuring the control functions is a bank reorganising from a position of strength rather than under pressure. The restructuring charge, the streamlining language around the merger, and the 2030 strategy's emphasis on shared technology point the same way. What the release does not do is quantify what the merger saves, if it does.

Whether a reporting line to the chief executive and the board carries the weight the seat carried will be shown in the first year of the merged unit.

*Nordea is a significant institution under direct European Central Bank supervision, so senior appointments go through a fit-and-proper assessment. The supervisor tests reputation, experience, independence of mind, time commitment, and whether the management body remains suitable as a whole.

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