Finnfund blog
Finnfund blog consists of articles by our experts and guest stars on various themes around development finance, developing countries and sustainable investing aiming to find solutions to global challenges.
Sampsa Auvinen: Crisis is reshaping the global plywood market
Can this be true? A modern factory producing high-quality FSC-certified plywood in Ghana? When I showed European buyers at the Dubai Woodshow exhibition in March pictures of the factory in Ghana, many found them hard to believe. Preconceptions are hard to break. I myself believe that this is just the beginning. The war in Ukraine […]
Read moreOctober 19, 2022
CFO insight into Q2: Keeping up the speed
The second quarter of 2022 continued to be a good one for Finnfund. Finnfund continued growing in the second quarter of 2022, reaching a portfolio value of 684 million euros, which is an increase of 26 million euros (+4%) from the year end 2021. 13 new investment decisions were made during the first two quarters, […]
Read moreSeptember 7, 2022
A tale of surveillance – investor’s role in dealing with data confidentiality
For me, Address Unknown is one of those books that everyone should read, over and over. It is one of those books that resonate when I think about cybersecurity, user data confidentiality, telecom sector and democracy. Despite the fact that the book was written in 1938, the basic idea is still, unfortunately, very topical today. […]
Read moreJune 27, 2022
From Myanmar to Finland – a quarterly review
In early March, I hopped on a long flight to Helsinki from Yangon in Myanmar, where I have been residing and working for the past six years. I was excited to embark on an adventure and a new challenge ahead of me: I had wrapped up my existing job in Yangon, accepted a job offer […]
Read moreJune 22, 2022
CFO insight into Q1: An active start for 2022
The first quarter of the year was marked by the Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as the continuous fight against the COVID-19 crisis and challenges in many markets. Despite the challenging situation, Finnfund had an active start of the year: In Q1, Finnfund made six new investment decisions, with a combined value of 78 […]
Read moreJune 7, 2022
Stakeholders’ voice – using technology to collect feedback directly from the key people
The world has now lived with the Covid-19 pandemic for over two years. The evidence shows that it has hit the least-developed countries the hardest. At the same time, climate change is increasingly affecting peoples’ daily lives. Again, those already in vulnerable positions are suffering the most. In this milieu, there is a need to understand […]
Read moreJune 6, 2022
Preparing for a successful exit: Sustainability should translate into a premium
A successful exit requires thorough understanding of the current trading of the investee and its future business prospects. Ideally, a new investor should bring in something new that the incumbent owners don’t possess. This can be experience on scaling-up similar businesses in other geographies, large financial or human resources, industry expertise, good brand or something […]
Read moreJune 1, 2022
Fast-growing agribusiness companies in Africa excel in resilience, innovation and harnessing technology to increase productivity
It’s been two years since Finnfund, FMO and IFC arranged the first ever African Cheetahs event, bringing together the “Cheetahs”, executives of Africa’s most promising, fast-growing agribusiness companies. So much has changed since then: we have all made our way through two years of challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic and these years have not only […]
Read moreMay 18, 2022
Listen to your stakeholders
In order to make good, smart decisions, we must have a thorough understanding of the changes in our operational environment and listen to our key people. This was the main idea when we started to work on our stakeholder survey. We wanted to know what our key people – such as our owners and other […]
Read moreMarch 7, 2022
SDG 5: A telecommunications operator’s best practices for promoting gender equality
Sustainable development means ending discrimination towards women and providing equal opportunities for education and employment. According to the experts, gender equality and women empowerment has been conclusively shown to stimulate economic growth, which is fundamental, especially in countries with higher unemployment rates and less economic opportunity. Founded in 2010, BCS is a wholesale telecommunications operator […]
Read moreFebruary 10, 2022