---
title: "Capital and Owners in Finland | Samuli Knüpfer | Neuvottelija 184"
titleOriginal: "Pääoma ja omistajat Suomessa | Samuli Knüpfer | Neuvottelija 184"
episodeNumber: "184"
guest: "Samuli Knüpfer"
datePublished: 2023-03-28
duration: "48:10"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["ownership_capital_tax","finnish_economy_policy","investing_markets"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio. The chapter marks are the publisher's own list as released with the video, each verified to fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. The host discloses in the episode that his firm contributed to establishing the professorship, and that disclosure is carried onto this page."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/273-paaoma-ja-omistajat-suomessa-samuli-knpfer-neuvottelija-184"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep184-paaoma-ja-omistajat-suomessa-samuli-knupfer/
---
# Capital and Owners in Finland | Samuli Knüpfer | Neuvottelija 184

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=0s) Intro: Finns like levelling incomes and wealth more than others. Our capital in unlisted companies is low
- [00:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=45s) Samuli Knüpfer — back to Helsinki via Oslo and London. Is wealth visible abroad?
- [02:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=139s) Establishing Aalto's professorship of ownership. Why is ownership in the dark in Finland?
- [03:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=195s) Forms of ownership; the owner carries the residual risk
- [04:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=285s) Are Finnish owners poor? Net wealth compared across Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark
- [05:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=332s) Sweden and Denmark richest in net wealth, Finns and Norwegians poorer (excluding the oil fund)
- [07:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=453s) The distribution of financial wealth: Finns are poor, heavy on deposits, light on unlisted shares
- [08:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=515s) The danger of raising taxes on unlisted companies as an election theme; the number of employer firms is already falling
- [10:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=605s) The anaemia of the Helsinki stock exchange
- [11:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=709s) Finns are weak on financial literacy, and experience competition as a bad thing
- [15:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=928s) The excellence of the equity savings account, and how to increase children's share saving
- [20:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=1220s) Comparing growth funds and other institutional investment across the Nordics
- [22:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=1360s) High rates on earned and capital income in Finland
- [25:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=1535s) Developing ownership in Finland
- [33:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=2000s) The large behavioural role of even a small holding
- [38:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=2320s) Finnish risk aversion showing in the large share held as deposits
- [41:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=2498s) Finnish state ownership is at a high level
- [44:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=2673s) The role of impact investing and ESG alongside ownership
- [47:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY&t=2874s) Outro

## Disclosure

The host states in the episode that his firm, Translink Corporate Finance, contributed a
small sum towards establishing the professorship of ownership discussed here.

## Summary

**Samuli Knüpfer**, professor of ownership at Aalto University, came on to work through
Finnish wealth and ownership in Nordic comparison.

**The Nordics are two groups, not one.** Sweden and Denmark are in a league of their own;
Finland and Norway look roughly alike. Norway's position surprises, given the oil fund, and
Knüpfer explains it historically: Norway was poor for a long time before oil, the fund is
comparatively young, and the whole design keeps the money out of citizens' accounts.
Neither Finland nor Norway has a long history of ownership and accumulating wealth. As
Finnish particularities he names the state's large role, the weight of big corporations,
and a German-style Mittelstand layer that is far thinner here than in Sweden or Denmark.

**One number explains most of it.** A Finnish household holds about 40 per cent of its
financial wealth in deposits, against roughly 20 in Sweden and Denmark — and the single
largest gap comes from unlisted shares, which tells the underlying story: more happens
outside the stock exchange in Sweden and Denmark. The other Nordics have distinctly more
companies per capita, and Finland is the only one of the four with fewer. The stock
exchange offers no relief either: Sweden has some 800 listed companies to Finland's two
hundred at roughly twice the size.

**The most striking finding is about attitudes.** Finland places worst of the four on
financial literacy, around tenth internationally where the others are among the best. But
Knüpfer finds the soft measure more interesting: Finns view competition as considerably
more harmful than other Nordics do, and of all the economic-belief statements compared
internationally, that is the largest single divergence.

**On venture capital he inverts the usual explanation.** Finland comes last of the four in
investment volumes, and in his view this is not for want of money or of good investors but
for want of good targets — which returns to the same root, that there are simply fewer
companies. Asked why growth stalls at a certain stage, he says plainly that he does not
know, and leaves the question open.

**His proposals are concrete.** Remove the cap on the equity savings account and allow
funds into it as well as shares. More importantly, give individuals some contact with their
own pension saving as Sweden and Norway do — his argument being about learning rather than
returns. On state ownership his demand is procedural: there should be a stated line on why
the state owns a given company and it should be kept, because a state owner's only real
asset is credibility with other investors. Asked whether all current holdings meet a
justification such as an unbreakable monopoly or a genuine strategic interest, he answers
that they certainly do not.

**He is careful about blaming Finnish savers.** Once tax and pension contributions come out
of a salary many have little left to invest, and the norm of paying off the home quickly
has its own logic — reinforced, Miettinen adds, by an owner-occupied home being in practice
the only tax-free asset class in Finland. Still, Knüpfer maintains a large part of it is
simply the way things are done here, and notes that change is real but slow: about 40 per
cent of households now hold shares or funds, approaching fifty.

The episode closes on ESG, which Knüpfer places by default inside the economic dimension
rather than against it, and on the edge case Miettinen raises, where a company captured
into projects benefiting the owning circle is a principal-agent problem dressed in a
responsibility framework.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel:
[Pääoma ja omistajat Suomessa | Samuli Knüpfer | Neuvottelija 184](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKeBLcimYfY).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at
[www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/273-paaoma-ja-omistajat-suomessa-samuli-knpfer-neuvottelija-184).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Capital and Owners in Finland | Samuli Knüpfer | Neuvottelija 184, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep184-paaoma-ja-omistajat-suomessa-samuli-knupfer/, 2023-03-28. For quotes include episode 184 and timestamp.