Shareholders

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:

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.

Three did. Two of those were the same bond amortisation at one company, and the third — a take-private crossing 90% — filed in September, after the month it belonged to.

August looked quiet on Nasdaq Helsinki flagging notifications. The shareholder registers moved more than the disclosure feed did. Finland's thresholds start at 5%, and most of the month's largest register moves never touched the ladder.

Here is what moved, what was notified, and what the gap between those two sets says about reading Nordic ownership.

Citycon: the take-private the register sees last

G City Ltd's directly registered stake in Citycon grew from 39.50% to 42.55% during August, a gain of 5.6 million shares. 

In the same window the Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken Helsinki Branch nominee account, which had been holding a large Citycon block in custody, shrank by 4.8 million shares. Citibank Europe's custodial line edged down as well.

That is not buying. It is the shares crossing out of nominee registration into G City's own name as the tender offer settles. G City's flagging notification of 2 September puts its total holding at 91.05%, against a directly registered position of 42.55% at the end of August. Both are correct: the rest still sits in custodial accounts, re-registering in tranches. Read alone, the register would tell you G City owns less than half of Citycon.

G City crossed 90% on 1 September, commenced compulsory redemption of the minority shares and will apply to delist. Our Citycon piece this week has the offer periods, the divestment and the parking dispute.

Faron: a new largest register holder, and no new money

Heights Capital Management, through CVI Investments, crossed a threshold in Faron Pharmaceuticals on 4 August and filed the next day: shares up from 7.99% to 9.41%. The same notification shows its holding through financial instruments falling from 12.53% to 11.30%, and combined exposure barely moving, 20.52% to 20.72%. This is a convertible bond converting under the up-to-€35m arrangement Faron entered with a Heights-managed entity in April 2025 — not a purchase. Faron's own treasury holding fell from 10.97% to 9.37% in the same event, through dilution rather than a sale.