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Overview

The Finnish technology M&A market has had yet another active year in 2022 following the covid-19 pandemic, but it is showing signs of cooling down. While investments have continued to stream into pandemic -aided digitalisation engines such as digital communication platforms, telemedicine and streaming technologies, the recent geopolitical and inflationary pressures have led to increased investor caution, with many investors opting for a wait-and-see approach in the current, uncertain investing climate.

While high value and leveraged transactions are not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, equity-financed industrial buyer activity has remained high. The pandemic has also provided new opportunities, for example, in the construction sector, which has seen a boom in acquisitions in the field of smart infrastructure.

As to market trends, environmental, social and governance (ESG) is high up on the list, with most Finnish acquirers taking ESG seriously when making acquisition decisions. Finland has also seen its first establishment of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), although their use in the Finnish market is predicted to be low, a sentiment further impacted by recent interventions by the US regulator in regard of what have been considered 'SPAC misuse' scenarios. The past couple of years have seen a welcome increase in initial public offering (IPO) activity on the Finnish market also impacting the tech space, but continued stock market volatility is likely to impact this development in the coming year.

Year in review

Below is a summary of some interesting Finnish technology M&A deals of the past year:

  1. Listed Indian Cyient Limited acquired engineering group Citec Group from PE investor Sentica. Cyient is a leading global technology solutions company and Citec's expertise is in industrial plant and product engineering. The combined portfolios of Cyient and Citec will be one of the largest independent plant engineering capabilities globally, and the transaction is the largest outbound acquisition by an Indian engineering services company to date.
  2. Oura Health Oy, a Finnish health tech company that manufactures sleep-tracking rings raised US$100 million in a Series C funding led by the Chernin Group and Elysian Park. Temasek, Square, JAZZ Venture Partners, Eisai, Forerunner Ventures, MSD Capital, Lifeline Ventures, Marc Benioff, Metaplanet Holdings and Next Ventures also joined the round.
  3. Wolt Enterprises Oy was acquired by KKR & Co Inc, EQT Partners AB, Goldman Sachs (private equity operations), Tiger Global Management, LLC, DST Global, Coatue Management, LLC, 83 North Ltd, Vintage Ventures Management Ltd, ICONIQ Capital, LLC, Highland Europe (UK) LLP and Prosus Ventures. Wolt is a Finland-based provider of food delivery tech solutions.
  4. Aiven was acquired by Earlybird Venture Capital GmbH & Co KG, Institutional Venture Partners, Atomico, Salesforce Ventures and World Innovation Lab. Finland-based Aiven is a provider of managed open-source data technologies, like PostgreSQL, Kafka, and M3, via the cloud. Aiven helps developers develop applications and manage cloud data infrastructure.
  5. The assets of Verto Analytics Oy were acquired by US-based DISQO, Inc, a notable media measurement service provider. Verto Analytic's solutions have been used by media companies around the world to understand behaviour and measure consumer journeys.