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EP420 · Economy · first published 2026-11-06

Private Equity Investors | Marko Junkkari | Negotiator 420

This article is based on a Neuvottelija episode. Find the episode details and recording on Neuvottelija.com.

Helsingin Sanomat journalist Marko Junkkari talks with Sami Miettinen about his book Pääomasijoittajat (Private Equity Investors, Otava 2026), for which he interviewed about 60 people, from London's mega-funds to Finnish buyout houses. The episode covers why the end of zero interest rates froze exits, what continuation funds and zombie funds are, how the GP–LP structure, management fee, hurdle rate and carry work, and how the returns of Sponsor, Intera and Vaaka came to be published. The central dispute stays open: Miettinen criticises Finnish pension insurers for putting tens of billions into American mega-funds and proposes the Swedish model, while Junkkari points to how small Finnish funds are. Disclosures: according to Junkkari the book was commissioned by the industry, and Miettinen is himself an LP investor and investment banker. Not investment advice.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and the Economy + AI and Society

Private Equity Investors | Marko Junkkari | Negotiator 420

Summary: Marko Junkkari is on Neuvottelija for the third time, now with his book Pääomasijoittajat (Private Equity Investors, Otava 2026). For the book he interviewed about 60 people, from Permira’s Kurt Björklund and KKR’s European leadership to Finnish buyout houses, venture investors and the state investor Tesi. Sami Miettinen asks from the point of view of an investment banker and LP investor. The episode has three parts: why the industry is in a braking phase, how funds actually work and earn, and why Finnish pension billions go mainly to American mega-funds rather than Finnish ones.

Disclosures. Junkkari says in the episode that the book is commissioned work: the investment company of Tuomas Lang, founder of Intera Partners, paid him a fee, and other private equity firms and the Finnish Venture Capital Association (Pääomasijoittajat ry) committed to buying a number of copies. He says he had a free hand. Sami Miettinen is an investment banker (Translink Corporate Finance) and says in the episode that he is himself an LP investor in private equity funds, sits on a portfolio company’s board, and has previously worked for Taaleri. He is also a member of the Finnish Venture Capital Association’s communications working group. The episode states that it gives no investment recommendations. This article is not investment advice.

How to read this. The captions carry no speaker labels, but the roles are clear: Junkkari reports on his book and interviews, Miettinen comments from his own experience in the industry. The criticism of the pension insurers is Miettinen’s own view, which he himself calls “salting”; Junkkari says he takes no side. The book itself was not read for this article. The book’s details were checked with the publisher.

The episode was recorded in the week after the US midterm elections (3 November 2026). A short members-only episode was recorded in the same session: US Midterms: Democrats vs MAGA (Neuvottelija Inner Circle 170). Junkkari’s earlier visits are The Right-Wing Government Pulled It Off! (Neuvottelija 196) and Power Struggles in Finland’s Industrial Elite (Neuvottelija 293), about his Pohjola book Vallan linnakkeen viimeinen taisto (Otava 2024).

1. The book, the author and the commission

Junkkari began interviewing in autumn 2025 and did the actual writing from February 2026. He did about 60 interviews and says there were still names on his list he did not get to. That is why growth investors, for example, get little space; he mentions the criticism himself. The book concentrates on buyouts but also covers venture capital and growth. The history goes back to Sitra’s days, but the weight is on the present.

Junkkari wrote himself into the story as a learner: the industry was “relatively unfamiliar” to him, and he says he learned the fee model in a two-hour session at the flipchart of Intera’s CFO. He says he tends to get excited about subjects not everyone finds the most sparkling, and tries to make a “boring subject” readable.

At the end of the episode Junkkari explains how the book came about. Tuomas Lang and his colleagues at other private equity firms had decided that the industry needed a book, and Lang approached Junkkari. Lang’s investment company paid a fee, and the other firms and the association committed to buying copies. Junkkari says the commissioners never tried to steer the content and that the book also contains critical views. Miettinen points to the interview with Intera’s current management, which goes through the Vastaamo and Polarico cases, and says he found no factual errors in the book. According to Junkkari the feedback from the industry has been “almost entirely positive”.

2. Mega-funds and small Finnish funds

Miettinen draws the industry as a barbell: at one end the world’s largest private equity firms (Permira, KKR, Apollo), to which money flows, at the other the small Finnish funds. In his view the middle is not a place to be.

In April 2026 Junkkari visited five or six large private equity firms in London with the help of Esko Torsti, head of private equity at the pension insurer Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen is a long-standing LP in these funds. Without Torsti, Junkkari says, he would not have got through the door. He tells two details:

Kurt Björklund is in Junkkari’s words “by every measure the most successful private equity investor in Finnish history”, who left young for Sweden and then London and has led Permira. He gives no interviews to Finnish media because, according to Junkkari, he gets “no benefit from it”. He did agree to the book. Miettinen says he knew Björklund in London when they were young.

3. The motorway analogy: why the industry is braking

Björklund explained the industry’s cycles to Junkkari with a traffic analogy. When someone brakes hard on a motorway, the queue slows and the slowdown compounds backwards; when there is no reason to brake, the whole queue speeds up. We are now in the braking phase, and the reason is, according to Junkkari, unambiguous: the era of zero and low interest rates ended in the early 2020s. Funds had bought companies at high valuations while money was cheap. The upswing has continued, but it has concentrated on AI.

The consequences chain:

  1. Portfolio companies cannot be sold at the old pace, even though their reported value rises.
  2. Distributions to LPs have been below normal, “even historically low”, according to Junkkari.
  3. When LPs do not get money back, they are reluctant to commit to the next fund. The whole market slows.

According to Junkkari the largest firms, such as EQT and KKR, are doing well even now; many mid-sized players are in trouble.

Miettinen adds an investment banker’s observation: an IPO does not always solve the problem either, because the stock market does not always allow the old owner’s shares to be sold. Until then the fund’s value is, in his words, “money in Excel”: a fund can report that a commitment of 300,000 euros is now worth 370,000, but no cash has come back.

4. Department stores and continuation funds

Junkkari describes two consequences that became clear in London.

The big firms have become department stores. They offer credit, real estate and “the whole palette”. If traditional buyouts stall, money is found elsewhere.

Continuation funds (continuation vehicles). When there is no outside buyer, the private equity firm sells the company to itself, into a new fund it sets up. According to Junkkari some have voiced concern that this raises system risk, as “debt is piled on debt”. And when institutions are not providing money as before, in the United States attention has turned to private investors. Miettinen’s response: caveat emptor. In his view this “is really not a game for small investors”.

The mechanics of the same phenomenon, the secondary market and evergreen valuations, were covered in more detail in The Great Return Illusion in Private Equity (Neuvottelija 405).

5. The basic mechanics: GP, LP, commitment and carry

Junkkari explains the structure and Miettinen adds to it:

Junkkari also stresses a risk invisible from outside. Raising a first fund means quitting your job, persuading a team to do the same, and fundraising for about a year. If the anchor investor says no, “your reputation, your money and your career are gone”. A failed firm becomes a zombie: it does not go bankrupt but withers slowly, unable to raise a new fund or exit the old portfolio. Junkkari says several sources suspect today’s market will produce more zombies.

6. Why private equity has beaten the stock market

On this Junkkari and Miettinen agree: historically private equity has returned more than the stock market. Miettinen gives two reasons, leverage and genuine value creation (“they run really hard”), which he sees himself on a portfolio company board. Junkkari adds a third: control. A buyout investor usually holds a majority, appoints the board and management, and when trouble comes can convene a board meeting and act within the hour. In a listed company’s dispersed ownership, big turnarounds are laborious.

Miettinen raises the flip side: as private equity takes companies off the exchange, the small investor’s “only democratic channel” narrows. Junkkari says he does not remember the figure exactly, but in his recollection the number of listed companies in the United States has fallen by about a third since 2000. At the same time Finnish pension money also moves into “a dark area”.

Miettinen notes that historical outperformance does not describe the present: even mega-fund returns are now weak, as the Bain comparison discussed in EP405 also shows.

7. Finland’s buyout gap and the Swedish model

Finnish funds are small, and according to Junkkari it shows in everything. You do not need to look to the United States: in Sweden, Norway and, he says, France buyout funds are considerably larger. Miettinen calls the gap critical: Finland lacks the large buyout funds that could “trade among themselves”. A company grown past the Mittelstand is therefore often sold to a foreign fund. As an example he mentions A-Katsastus, a vehicle inspection company that passed to Britain’s Bridgepoint, went badly in his account and returned to Finnish ownership. The Bridgepoint interviewee, according to Junkkari, declined to be named.

Junkkari says CapMan and EQT started from nearly the same line in the late 1980s and early 1990s, CapMan’s first funds even slightly earlier. They grew at the same pace in the 1990s. In the 2000s EQT grew into one of the world’s five largest private equity firms. Junkkari’s explanation:

CapMan’s “tragedy”, according to Junkkari, was timing. In 2006 it raised a buyout fund of about 400 million euros, and the financial crisis hit just as investing had begun. The next fund was meant to approach a billion. The series broke, the next two funds were weak, and CapMan has now left buyouts. It has succeeded in real estate and infrastructure. Junkkari was particularly amused that CapMan’s infrastructure fund owns vessels of a Norwegian salmon transport company. Miettinen hopes CapMan will return to buyouts, “because it is the royal discipline”.

8. Returns made public: Sponsor, Intera and Vaaka

Junkkari was told in advance that he would never get Finnish buyout funds’ return figures. The turning point came at Sponsor Capital: the partners decided the figures could be shared. Junkkari guesses that Sponsor’s figures are historically excellent. He then told competitors that Sponsor had shared its numbers, and Intera and Vaaka shared theirs. MB Funds (MB Rahastot) declined.

The book publishes the realised net multiples of these firms’ fund series, and the episode shows a chart. Miettinen highlights Sponsor’s first fund, whose multiple was in his reading about three: 100,000 euros came back as about 300,000 after management fees and carry. He also notes that the LP’s money is locked for 10–12 years in an illiquid and risky asset, so the return must be clearly better than the stock market’s.

Intera’s story, according to Miettinen, is one of progress. Its first fund was in his words weak, but in the very week of recording Intera announced a 450-million-euro fund, in Junkkari’s understanding the largest Finnish buyout fund. In the same week, according to Miettinen, MB Funds announced a 222-million-euro fund. Miettinen describes MB as a cautious house that makes returns and “does not make noise about itself”. Junkkari mentions MB’s unusual Kotkamills investment: a new machine was built at the board mill and the company was later sold on. Miettinen says he was himself involved in Kotkamills’ refinancing.

Both point to the A-Katsastus and Intera cases as examples of the book not smoothing things over. Intera’s current management got, in Miettinen’s words, “a fine grilling”.

9. Deal-by-deal funds: DevCo, Taaleri and Vexve

DevCo Partners is, according to Junkkari, one of the book’s most fascinating stories. Its young founders do not like to call themselves private equity investors, and the firm is not a member of the Finnish Venture Capital Association. Instead of raising a fund in advance, each target is financed separately, “buyout-sized in a growth spirit”, as Miettinen puts it. Both still count DevCo as private equity.

Miettinen notes that Taaleri pioneered the deal-by-deal structure in Finland (a wind fund, a Rauma shipyard fund) and was left out of the book, as was Bocap and Julianna Borsos. Junkkari apologises and pleads lack of time.

10. Two generations of venture capital

Junkkari started as a journalist at the turn of the millennium, and the first venture generation he describes is tragic:

The second generation succeeded. It includes Timo Ahopelto, who according to Junkkari had a very positive experience with Kai Karttunen’s Stratos Ventures: a good firm, but 1999 was “a deadly bad vintage”. The CRF Health business Ahopelto built succeeded, and he and his partners founded Lifeline Ventures. Miettinen says Karttunen was his boss at Credit Suisse. According to Junkkari the Finnish venture miracle began in the early 2010s, with 2014 as the “super year”: Supercell, Wolt, Slush. He leaves open what was cause and what effect. Miettinen stresses the importance of exceptional individuals such as Ahopelto and Miki Kuusi, and notes that Wolt was at times close to bankruptcy. According to Junkkari the new generation goes international far more boldly, and Slush has contributed to that.

11. Tesi: the strategy battle and the “Finland Club”

Junkkari’s first meeting with Pia Santavirta at Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment) began with a dressing-down. Santavirta had seen an email in which Junkkari called Tesi’s staff civil servants. Tesi, however, is a wholly state-owned limited company whose staff are employees. After the dressing-down the conversation went well. Santavirta was previously CEO of the Finnish Venture Capital Association and was the guest of Neuvottelija episode 94.

According to Junkkari there was “quite a battle” over Tesi’s strategy. The background is 20 years of weak economic growth, which has made politicians expect ever more from growth companies and from Tesi. A new strategy was drafted under Minister of Economic Affairs Rydman, and its original draft would have been, according to Junkkari, “a complete change”: fund investments sharply cut, buyout fund investing ended and the focus moved to direct investments. Junkkari considers that risky and points to the broad view among economists that a state investor should not pick winners. The draft was walked back. Fund investments are now, according to Junkkari, about 50 per cent, and direct investments are much larger than before, up to 100 million in one company.

Miettinen describes Tesi’s LP ticket as validation of a fund: Tesi does the due diligence, and its “stamp” makes it easier for other investors to come in. Tesi’s condition is that for every euro it puts in there are two euros of private money. Miettinen knows funds that did not get off the ground because Tesi said no, the “Del Monte man says no” phenomenon, as he calls it.

The Finland Club (Suomiklubi) is, according to Junkkari, Santavirta’s idea. Tesi has earlier set up a fund of funds, Kasvurahastojen rahasto (the Growth Fund of Funds), in which pension insurers have invested and which has done well. The Finland Club would bring the same logic to direct investments: large Finnish institutions would commit in advance, so that when, for example, ICEYE’s next round comes on a tight schedule, Tesi could participate with a large ticket. Miettinen likes the idea but notes it needs smart people and luck; after failures “everyone piles on”.

12. The scale-up gap

Junkkari connects Tesi’s role to Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness. Europe and Finland lack US-scale scale-up financing, rounds raising hundreds of millions. When the game moves to the global level, early Finnish investors’ stakes are diluted. According to Junkkari, Finnish ownership in companies like Oura is currently about 14 per cent, so 86 per cent of potential returns go elsewhere. The aim of Tesi, and of Europe more broadly, is to stay in for later rounds.

According to Junkkari the public debate has shifted thanks to Timo Ahopelto, Ilkka Paananen and others: pension money should be made available to growth companies, and the pension insurers have, he says, taken “quite a lot of steps” in that direction.

13. Pension billions: the episode’s open dispute

Here Miettinen takes a position and says so himself: “now comes Miettinen’s salting department for the pension cluster”.

Miettinen’s criticism. Three pension investment executives of a certain generation have, in his account, steered “something like 60–70 billion” into this asset class over time. Today a double-digit number of billions is committed, but in Finland, by his estimate, “maybe a billion”. He finds “touching” the passage of the book in which a pension investor’s highlight is sitting next to a famous name at a mega-fund dinner; Obama is mentioned in the conversation. Miettinen says he has himself sat next to Max Liechtenstein and done a deal with this former JP Morgan Partners executive: “a perfectly ordinary mortal”. He asks whether it is the job of a pension chief charged with secure and profitable investing to sit at dinners, invest in American funds and leave Finland out. Junkkari notes that which stories from a multi-hour interview make it into the book is the author’s choice. Miettinen says, however, that the pension insurers have done “really fine work” and managed the money securely and profitably.

Junkkari’s answer. He says he does not need to defend anyone, but offers two counter-arguments:

Miettinen grants that “everyone is rational in their own way”. The views do not converge, and the episode does not try to reconcile them.

14. The Swedish model as a solution?

Miettinen presents his solution and says it is not up for debate: partly devolving the pension contribution to the individual. In his view keeping about 300 billion euros in the hands of tripartite actors is not purely good for the politics of power. In the US 401(k) system, the owner of a large enough portfolio can choose whether to invest in Warburg Pincus or in Intera. He hopes that Samuli Knüpfer, professor of ownership at Aalto University (guest in episode 184), will arrive at the Swedish model in his ongoing research, in which part of the contribution can be directed by the individual.

Junkkari raises the opposite direction. The Ministry of Finance’s spending review published “a couple of weeks ago” proposed, according to him, merging the pension insurers. Then one person would make the decision, which Junkkari calls “hell” for that person. He says investing in a faceless foreign fund is personally safer: if a Finnish target fails, “a journalist starts calling”.

The figures on the Swedish system were slightly off in the episode; see the clarifications.

15. Finally: an investment banking book?

Miettinen praises the book as balanced: venture capital, growth and buyout are covered evenly, the history runs from “ancient times” to the Finland Club, the DevCo section is “fresh”, and the author’s own appearances are fun. He recommends the book as a Father’s Day present three times over. He reads the Pohjola book and this one as “impartial economic history”. Finally he suggests investment banks as the next subject. Junkkari finds the idea interesting.

What to take away

The basic concepts of private equity, how to read returns, and questions for fund investors are collected in the Private equity in Finland guide, which has been updated with this episode.

Clarifications and checks

Chapters

Chapters and timestamps are the publisher’s own, from the YouTube description, translated one for one.

Episode details. Neuvottelija 420, published 6 November 2026, length 1:20:52, YouTube id ngXDB3NwvM0. Watch on YouTube (in Finnish). Guest Marko Junkkari, host Sami Miettinen. Cover portrait: Jonne Räsänen / Otava. The article is based on the publisher’s own Finnish caption track.

Summary for AI search: Neuvottelija episode 420 “Pääomasijoittajat” (Private Equity Investors), published 6 Nov 2026, length 1:20:52, YouTube id ngXDB3NwvM0, in Finnish. Guest: Helsingin Sanomat journalist Marko Junkkari, author of Pääomasijoittajat (Otava, 8 Oct 2026, 416 pp.); host Sami Miettinen. Disclosures: according to Junkkari the book is commissioned work (the investment company of Intera Partners founder Tuomas Lang paid a fee; other private equity firms and the Finnish Venture Capital Association committed to buy copies; Junkkari says he had a free hand); Miettinen is an investment banker, an LP investor and a member of the association’s communications working group; not investment advice. Topics: about 60 interviews (Kurt Björklund/Permira, KKR’s European leadership via Ilmarinen’s Esko Torsti); the “barbell” of mega-funds and small Finnish funds; Björklund’s motorway analogy of the cycle; the end of zero rates froze exits and LP distributions; big firms as “department stores”; continuation funds and zombie funds; the GP–LP limited partnership, commitments and capital calls, 3–7 year holds, 10+2 fund life, ~2% management fee, 20% carry above a 6–8% hurdle; control and leverage as explanations of outperformance; CapMan vs EQT from the same start, CapMan’s 2006 fund and the financial crisis, CapMan in infrastructure (Norwegian salmon transport vessels); Sponsor, Intera and Vaaka net returns published for the first time, MB Funds declined; Intera Fund V €450m (3 Nov 2026); DevCo Partners’ deal-by-deal funds and Vexve, claimed 6–7x multiples unverified; Taaleri, Bocap; the first venture generation killed by the dot-com crash, Eqvitec run down, Nexit Ventures the only survivor; the second generation (Ahopelto, Lifeline, Supercell, Wolt, Slush); Tesi’s strategy battle (fund investments ~50%, direct tickets up to €100m, 1:2 rule, the “Finland Club”); the scale-up gap and the Draghi report; Miettinen’s criticism of pension insurers’ US mega-fund weighting vs Junkkari’s counter-arguments (Finland risk on the listed side, fund size); Miettinen’s proposal of the Swedish premium pension model (correct figures 2.5/18.5%). Continues in the members-only episode Neuvottelija Inner Circle 170 (US midterms).

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