EP190 · Economy · first published 2023-05-05
Cross-border M&A at Translink Miami | Mike Dinan, Fredrik Ullberg | Negotiator 190
The channel's first all-English episode: a field report from the Translink Directors' Meeting in Miami Beach, April 2023. Mike Dinan, founder of Dinan & Company, describes how a 35-year-old firm that was exclusively buy-side for its first two decades added a sell-side arm and affiliated with Translink, and gives the reason this matters now: US private equity holds $1.5 trillion of dry powder and interest peaks in the soft part of the cycle. Fredrik Ullberg of Translink Sweden covers Miss Group's 21 acquisitions in five years and the Sweden-Finland deal corridor. Miettinen works through the Nordic ID and Brady Corporation public takeover, where the chairman is the key person, Siilasmaa's precise communication in the Alcatel-Lucent deal, and Tamtron's directed share offering to finance Lahti Precision. Published 5 May 2023.
Cross-border M&A at Translink Miami | Mike Dinan, Fredrik Ullberg
Summary: Episode 190 is the channel’s first English-language episode: a field report from the Translink Directors’ Meeting in Miami Beach, April 2023, with interviews of Mike Dinan, founder of Dinan & Company, and Fredrik Ullberg, managing partner of Translink Sweden, plus Sami Miettinen’s own notes on cross-border public takeovers. Published 5 May 2023.
Why this episode is in English
Miettinen opens with an apology to Finnish listeners — “pahoittelut suomenkielisille kuuntelijoille, tämä on englantia koko jakso” — and closes by asking for feedback on whether the format works at all. That framing matters when reading the episode: it is an experiment, sixteen minutes long, built out of two on-site interviews and a set of deal notes rather than a studio conversation.
The setting is the Translink Directors’ Meeting held in Miami Beach in April 2023. Finland is one of 36 countries in the network, which has closed over 8,000 deals, and an increasing share of those are cross-border. The host of the event was Dinan & Company.
Mike Dinan on the conference and the network
Mike Dinan, founder of Dinan & Company, describes the conference’s distinguishing feature: the firm invited its friends from the US private equity community to join and hold one-on-one meetings with bankers from the countries they were interested in. He calls that the best aspect of the event.
The firm’s own arc is the clearest structural point in the episode. Dinan & Company is thirty-five years old and was exclusively buy-side for its first twenty-odd years. About twelve years ago it created a sell-side subsidiary, and six or seven years ago it affiliated with Translink to extend its capabilities internationally. Miettinen puts the scale on it: over 500 buy-side deals executed. The firm has four offices in the United States and one in Asia, and Dinan’s point about Translink is that it provides an international connection to capable bankers elsewhere rather than a branch network of its own.
The number worth writing down is Dinan’s reference point on why this matters now: the US private equity community holds $1.5 trillion of dry powder and is under tremendous pressure to invest it. His view is that private equity interest peaks precisely in the soft part of the cycle, which makes this a good opportunity for US firms to invest in Europe and elsewhere — a point reinforced by the panel’s observation that the American cycle runs somewhat ahead of Europe’s, which was then heading down.
Asked whether the Nordics gain an edge now that Finland has joined NATO, Dinan answers carefully: Finland has always been popular with Americans, and NATO membership can only enhance the relationship. Miettinen adds the fun fact that Translink International’s chairman is a Finn, Tero Nummenpää.
Trust, local custom and the waiting game
The conference’s client testimony came from Ignacio Macias, chairman of CECOP, who analysed his relationship with Translink Corporate Finance and received tombstones from Translink’s German partner, Andreas Hüchting. The advice distilled from that session is practical rather than theoretical:
- Always trust the advisor, and build trust deliberately before you need it.
- Handle the LOI carefully, and be willing to play the waiting game. What matters is closing the deal; sometimes it looks as though you lost it, and you still have to go through the motions.
- Local customs matter. A deal runs far more smoothly when the parties can use their own language with the counterparties — which a good advisor can arrange — and knowing the local rules and customs is as important as knowing the numbers.
The testimony also produced the episode’s best line. Macias said he had done so many deals with the firm that he had spent more time with one of its bankers than with his wife.
Why the chairman is the key person in a Finnish takeover
Miettinen’s own cross-border case is the public takeover of Nordic ID of Finland by Brady Corporation of America, in which Nordic ID’s chairman Jorma Lalla bore a very high burden in communication and in handling the matter. This is not a uniquely Finnish phenomenon, but in the Finnish public takeover system the chairman is the key person — worth knowing before an American or continental buyer assumes the CEO is the counterparty.
The deal was the first ever First North Nasdaq transaction in Finland done in the public market. Miettinen’s tip for such processes is to play it by the book, with the wrinkle that at the time there was no book: the process had to be run on the network’s experience of international deals while following the Helsinki takeover code. As of 2022, however, First North companies are obliged to work with the Helsinki takeover code, which imposes a very detailed timetable to manage.
Fredrik Ullberg on the Sweden–Finland corridor
Fredrik Ullberg, managing partner of Translink’s Swedish office, brings the buy-and-build side. His flagship case is Miss Group, a client of five years now backed by the UK private equity firm Perwyn, for which the network has completed 21 acquisitions in five years — some in Sweden, but mostly outside it: Lithuania, Switzerland, Spain, Finland and Norway. It is, as Miettinen puts it, one of the most successful buy-and-build operations in Translink’s history, and it runs on an exclusive mandate.
On the Sweden–Finland corridor Ullberg is direct: the collaboration is good, Finland has many good targets and Sweden has the buyers, so there will be many deals in future. Two concrete examples close the section:
- Suora Broadcast, which produces Finland’s hockey broadcasts, sold to DMC in a deal backed by the Olsson family known for the Stena group — a deal the Finnish and Swedish offices worked together.
- Renta, owned by IK Partners, acquired two companies almost simultaneously — one in Finland, one in Sweden — with both sellers represented by a Translink company. Miettinen’s point is that this is how a network accumulates industry knowledge in a sector, in this case construction services.
The network’s industry groups are the other half of that story: Translink is particularly strong in software and SaaS, and was at that point branching into transactions for companies using artificial intelligence.
The exchange also contains the episode’s only piece of needling. Miettinen notes that Sweden got mentioned twice in the panel’s cross-border US corridor discussion while Finland did not, and adds that Sweden was not even in NATO yet. Ullberg’s reply — “it’s like the ice hockey, Sweden is a little bit better than Finland” — draws a flat “I disagree”. For the record, the episode also contains footage of Sasha Barkov assisting a goal against the Bruins, and the Florida Panthers went on to win that playoff series 4–3.
Two financing notes worth keeping
The chairman-to-CEO channel. Miettinen recalls interviewing Risto Siilasmaa, then chairman of Nokia, during the largest takeover in Finnish history — the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. Siilasmaa used very precise communication through the target’s CEO to its board: “I want you to take this offer to your board.” It is a firm statement that is deliberately not an ultimatum in the negotiating sense, and the distinction is the point.
Listing as an acquisition currency. Translink Finland listed Tamtron, a Tampere-based company, in an IPO that generated over €10 million of proceeds. Almost immediately afterwards it acquired Lahti Precision, and as a freshly listed company it was able to use a directed share offering to finance part of the transaction. Miettinen states the trade-off honestly: there are real benefits to being listed, but you also open yourself to public takeovers, and a private-equity-owned or otherwise unlisted company is playing a different game.
The market picture
The episode closes on slides shared by David Strempel, the partner in Translink’s Italy office, on the trend in mid-market deals: a very large market, split roughly three ways between Europe, North America, and the global East and South. The conference’s own conclusion was that the cross-border machine is now genuinely running, with deal volumes going up despite the market being down in 2023.
A note on the source
This is an English-language episode, and the cleaned cue file is therefore a .en.srt. The
MacWhisper transcription lost sentence casing and punctuation across two stretches — the Nordic
ID passage around 02:52 and the takeover-code passage around 12:45 — which have been restored
without changing the words. Three proper names the transcription mangled were verified against
public sources before correction: Translink International’s chairman, Nordic ID’s chairman, and
the Florida Panthers player named in the hockey footage. One name in the client-testimony
passage could not be verified and has been left exactly as transcribed.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Cross-border M&A Translink Miami | Mike Dinan Fredrik Ullberg | Negotiator 190.