Cross-border M&A at Translink Miami | Mike Dinan, Fredrik Ullberg | Negotiator 190

Summary

Episode 190 is the channel’s first English-language episode: a sixteen-minute field report from the Translink Directors’ Meeting in Miami Beach, April 2023, built from two on-site interviews and a set of deal notes rather than a studio conversation. Miettinen opens with an apology to Finnish listeners and closes by asking for feedback on whether the format works.

Mike Dinan, founder of Dinan & Company, gives the clearest structural account. His firm is thirty-five years old and was exclusively buy-side for its first twenty-odd years — over 500 buy-side deals executed — before creating a sell-side subsidiary twelve years ago and affiliating with Translink six or seven years ago to extend internationally. The conference’s distinguishing feature was that Dinan & Company invited its friends from the US private equity community to hold one-on-one meetings with bankers from the countries that interested them.

The number to take away is Dinan’s reference point on why Europe matters now: US private equity holds $1.5 trillion of dry powder and is under tremendous pressure to invest it, and its interest peaks precisely in the soft part of the cycle — which, as the panel observed, is where Europe was heading while the American cycle ran ahead. Asked about NATO, Dinan is measured: Finland has always been popular with Americans, and membership can only enhance the relationship.

Fredrik Ullberg, managing partner of Translink Sweden, brings the buy-and-build side. Miss Group, a five-year client now backed by the UK private equity firm Perwyn, has had 21 acquisitions completed for it in five years on an exclusive mandate — some in Sweden but mostly outside it, in Lithuania, Switzerland, Spain, Finland and Norway. On the Sweden–Finland corridor he is direct: Finland has many good targets, Sweden has the buyers, and more deals will follow. Two worked 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; and Renta, owned by IK Partners, acquiring two companies almost simultaneously in Finland and Sweden, with both sellers represented by a Translink company.

Three deal lessons come from Miettinen’s own notes. First, in the Finnish public takeover system the chairman is the key person: in Brady Corporation’s offer for Nordic ID — the first ever First North Nasdaq transaction in Finland done in the public market — chairman Jorma Lalla bore a very high burden in communication and in handling the matter. His tip is to play it by the book, with the caveat that at the time there was no book; as of 2022 First North companies are obliged to work with the Helsinki takeover code and its detailed timetable. Second, from interviewing Risto Siilasmaa during Nokia’s acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent: precise communication through the target’s CEO to its board — “I want you to take this offer to your board” — is a firm statement that is deliberately not an ultimatum. Third, a freshly listed company can use listing as acquisition currency: Translink Finland listed Tamtron in an IPO raising over €10 million, and almost immediately afterwards Tamtron acquired Lahti Precision, part-financed through a directed share offering. The trade-off is stated plainly — being listed also opens you to public takeovers.

The client testimony came from Ignacio Macias, chairman of CECOP, and produced the practical advice worth keeping: trust the advisor; handle the LOI carefully and be willing to play the waiting game, because what matters is closing; and respect local rules and customs, since a deal runs far more smoothly when parties can use their own language with the counterparties. The episode ends on David Strempel’s slides showing the mid-market deal trend splitting roughly three ways between Europe, North America, and the global East and South, with cross-border volumes rising despite a down market in 2023.

A note on the source

This is an English-language episode and the cleaned cue file is 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 were 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; it was left exactly as transcribed and is not repeated here.

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Cross-border M&A Translink Miami | Mike Dinan Fredrik Ullberg | Negotiator 190. A Finnish-site edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.