B R I EN F IITN GLIS H IN G AVS TSEBN ES K RIVN
Young entrepreneurs
Kurt Kääriäinen.
P H OTO: PATRI K L INDSTRÖ M
Thorough survey on board members The development that took place 10–20 years ago in boards of major listed companies’ is now also entering the medium-sized businesses. Many boards are still far from being professional. This is the conclusion from a recent survey on Hanken at the initiative of and in cooperation with Friisberg & Partners International. The study comprises of governance practices in slightly more than 50 medium-sized Finnish companies, some of them listed companies, with annual sales of 100–280 million euros and 100–2 000 employees. The survey was addressed to the chairpersons of 100 companies. The response rate was 53 percent. Kurt Kääriäinen, representing Friisberg & Partners in Finland took the initiative to the study because the demand for new board members in this type of businesses has increased. Patrick Furu, professor in management and organization and academic director at Hanken & IFL, is responsible for the practical implementation of the survey at Hanken. He confirms that there is a clear need for more knowledge about how the Boards work in this type of businesses. Findings include that the amount of female board members is extremely low. Furthermore, board members are quite old and the boards do not carry out self-assessment very often. The compensation for board members is in line with the size of the corporations. A positive surprise, according to the research team, was that 14 percent of the boards had international members. After an initial review of the results the team will work on new hypotheses in order to get as much information as possible from the material. Hanken has also conducted a similar survey among SMEs in Sweden. The survey shall be completed during December. The two studies will be compared. If everything goes according to plan the concept will be applied, with local adaptation, in a dozen countries in Europe. 22
The seminar “Hankeiter som vågat mera” at Hanken in Vaasa in the end of October attracted some 80 students who were genuinely interested in entrepreneurship. Four young entrepreneurs, all Hanken alumni, acted as lecturers. Brand- and design expert Lisa Sounio, co-founder of the online business traveller service DOPPLR and now in charge of Sonay, a consulting firm specializing in branding strategies, spoke about the importance of believing in yourself as an entrepreneur. Regardless of company size is the manager’s responsibilities towards its staff to ensure that the company is profitable, emphasised Anna Häggblom representing the interior design company Aveo. Häggblom’s company was founded in 2006 and today employs 17 people. Markus Myllymäki, an entrepreneur since his teens, founded Nova Floor, an online parquet flooring business, in 2007. – Next we plan to expand by creating a loose franchise network under the name Nova Floor, he stated. The fourth lecturer was Stephanie Seege, a current marketing student at Hanken in Helsinki, has alongside her studies run the company Onnidesign that sells handmade bracelets and necklaces online. Seege is currently looking into expanding and hiring people to assist her.
The final Hanken Focus Forum events The last Focus Forum events of Hanken’s centennial celebrations took place on 1 December 2009. The Department of Commercial Law arranged a seminar in Helsinki on the strategic importance of intellectual property (IP) for companies. Dr Max Oker-Blom, former Senior Vice President (Legal and M & A) at Fazer, gave the keynote speech on how to get the company’s management involved in decisions concerning IP. Senior Legal Counsel Nordics Jan Vidjeskog, Philip Morris AB, continued with the role of IP at Philip Morris. Assistant Professor Marcus Norrgård chaired the event and was very happy with the outcome and the activity of the participants. ‘I believe that the good discussion that arouse is a direct reflection of the growing importance of IP law for a large number of companies,’ Dr. Norrgård summed up. On Vaasa Campus Professor Johan Knif hosted a seminar entitled Corporate Governance and Banking. The event attracted numerous Hanken alumni and friends as keynote speaker Alan Reichert (Cleveland State University, USA) gave a presentation on “U.S. Financial Sector Regulation and Governance: What’s Next?” Professor Reichert has served with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and as a consultant on a number of property devaluation and bank fraud cases. He also has longstanding connection to Hanken as a Senior Research Fellow.