---
title: "The Uniper Negotiation, Read as a Negotiation — Sami Miettinen on Rahapodi #297"
titleOriginal: "Keskiluokka, Uniper-kämmi ja kontraamisen jalo taito | #rahapodi 297"
description: "Rahapodi obtained the Uniper negotiation memos by information request and brought in Sami Miettinen to read them as a negotiator rather than a commentator. His verdict: Finland sent the wrong seniority to the wrong subject, defended a sunk seven billion instead of the eight billion still recoverable, and never used the leverage it actually held — Germany's gas dependency and the option of filing Uniper into bankruptcy."
format: "podcast"
show: "#rahapodi"
episode: "#297"
hosts: ["Miikka Luukkonen","Martin Paasi"]
date: 2022-09-08
duration: "1:09:49"
language: "fi"
original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzuMjfl1TDo
relatedEpisode: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/rahapodi-270-bringing-back-the-markka/
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/rahapodi-297-uniper-negotiation-and-contrarian-investing/
---

# The Uniper Negotiation, Read as a Negotiation — Sami Miettinen on Rahapodi #297

Three subjects for the price of one. The middle one is why Miettinen is there.

## A listener's letter, and what it costs to be a small entrepreneur

The episode opens on a listener's account, read out in full. A small business owner with three
children and six employees, roughly €3,600 net a month, eleven years of saving into passive index
funds — and then one week in early September in which everything landed at once. The company's
annual electricity bill goes from a little over €7,000 to more than €52,000. Turnover is in the
low millions, EBITDA margin ten to fifteen per cent, and heating is three to four fifths of the
winter bill. Premises and home already run on ground-source heat, there are solar panels on both
roofs, and the house was already at 18°C last winter.

He offers the hosts three options: hunker down; accept the new contracts, raise his own pay a
little and try to pass the cost through; or lay off the staff for the winter, move the family to
Spain to do teaching cover, and rent the premises out for motorcycle storage — which his own
spreadsheet says is by far the best outcome for him and the worst for everyone else.

The hosts decline to give investment advice but work the problem. Miettinen's practical
suggestion is the one missing from the letter: with inflation running and everyone raising
prices, a ten to fifteen per cent increase justified line by line to customers is the obvious
first move, though the real question is what happens to demand in a recession. Both are against
the shutdown option, because turnover and staff may not come back. Miettinen's addition to the
employment discussion is a principle: a responsible firm hires as though the post exists until
that person's retirement, which forces discipline about taking on cost and shows in how the place
feels; and staff turnover is expensive enough that treating people well pays for itself.

The general advice that follows is about liquidity rather than net worth. Do not overpay down the
mortgage — the monthly cost stays the same and the bank will not credit you for having been good
if you cannot service interest for three months. **Cash is what you fight a recession with.**
And if you hold a lot of it while the ECB cannot act on inflation, holding some of it in another
currency is worth considering.

## The Uniper memos

The main event. *Talouselämä* and *Iltalehti* obtained the negotiation memos by information
request, and Paasi reads the timeline out.

Finland and Fortum wanted the gas business separated out of Uniper, leaving the profitable hydro
and nuclear. Germany pushed a **unity model** in which the German state takes a stake and brings a
financing package. The German model is what happened.

On 14 July 2022 Finland's delegation in Berlin comprised the minister for European affairs, a
state secretary, an official from the ownership steering unit, a special adviser and the
ambassador. Across the table were Uniper's chief executive and the federal government's chief
negotiator, with seventeen German names appearing in the memos. On 19 July the ministerial
committee recorded that the parties' positions were too far apart; on 21 July Finland's political
leadership approved the outcome in an email meeting; on 22 July the German chancellor interrupted
his holiday to announce it. Germany acquired 30 per cent of Uniper for €267 million and Fortum's
holding diluted from 80 to 56 per cent — against roughly €7 billion Fortum had paid for its stake.

Miettinen's reading has four parts.

**Match the levels.** He cites Risto Siilasmaa, whom he interviewed for his book, on the basic
rule: chief executives negotiate with chief executives, chairs with chairs, owners with owners,
CFOs and lawyers among themselves. Germany played this as a state-level negotiation about state
matters, in which Uniper and its majority owner were components. Finland sent a second team.
Whatever one thinks of the individuals, the prime minister was not in the room matching the
chancellor, and that is the cardinal error.

**Identify what is actually on the table.** This was never a corporate restructuring; it was two
sovereign states negotiating over energy supply for their own territories, with Russian gas
volumes — zero or a hundred — as the second elephant. Finland's own energy support package, put
together weeks later, copied the good parts of the German unity package. That is what should have
been negotiated in July: how Finland could help with the nationalisation of the pipeline
infrastructure Germany had just legislated for, in exchange for terms.

**Use the leverage you have.** Germany's weakness was the Nord Stream dependency created by its
own energy policy, and it was already fairly clear the pipe would falter. Second, the contracts
themselves: Uniper had signed supply agreements with no force majeure clause covering Russian
supply failure, so it was buying replacement LNG at any price and paying the derivatives on top.
Finland could have insisted Germany declare this a state matter — Putin broke your arrangement,
so the contracts are your problem, not a foreign shareholder's. Politically that was impossible
for Germany, since it would have put the cost straight onto German consumers, which is precisely
why it was leverage.

**Be willing to execute the threat.** The strongest card Finland never played was filing Uniper
into insolvency, or credibly appearing willing to. Uniper's business matters far more to Germany
than to Finland; with €8 billion of debt in the structure, Finland would have had a substantial
seat at the creditors' table and could have pulled the hydro and nuclear out that way. Miettinen's
caveat is the one that makes it a real tactic rather than a bluff: any threat you make you must be
prepared to carry out, and Finland was not.

The underlying error he names is the one he keeps naming. Finland defended the **sunk** €7 billion
paid for the shares instead of the €8 billion injected in January that was still recoverable, and
fixed on a small objective — the political need for a visible backstop so the government could say
no more money would follow Fortum — instead of stepping back to see the whole picture. As he puts
it, the backstop is watertight around the edges and has a hole in the middle.

The hosts push on the venue and the language: why go to Berlin at all rather than say *come to
Finland, we can file Uniper in a couple of days*? Miettinen agrees the venue is a real advantage
and that a good negotiator merely knows their handicaps; he also thinks conducting the discussion
in German rather than English handed away ground, since international negotiations are held in
English precisely so neither side has the home field.

## Contrarian thinking

The final third is the hosts' attempt at something constructive. Contrarianism is defined
practically: the contrarian sells when the economy is roaring and considers buying when it is
awful — and the hard half is the second, because when the newspapers are screaming about
bankruptcies almost nobody has spare capacity to act.

Their concrete suggestions are all about being able to move when the moment comes. A fixed-rate
mortgage taken early — one listener locked fifteen years at 0.69 per cent. Selling things that are
surplus and cyclical: Paasi discloses downsizing his boat twice, swapping the car and selling a
watch at double what he paid. Cancelling subscriptions nobody tracks, which finds a hundred euros
a month. And the mechanical one: if you own an investment flat, consider selling it before the
market breaks, then move the loan's collateral onto your own home and keep the borrowing capacity
open — because **the bank will not lend to you at the moment you most want to buy**, when its own
balance sheet is full of defaults.

Original recording (#rahapodi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzuMjfl1TDo

From the same session: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/rahapodi-270-bringing-back-the-markka/

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on #rahapodi #297 — The Uniper Negotiation, Read as a Negotiation — Sami Miettinen on Rahapodi #297, 2022-09-08, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzuMjfl1TDo. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/rahapodi-297-uniper-negotiation-and-contrarian-investing/.