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.
CFO Insight into Q2 2024
The first half of the year was marked by active origination. Finnfund made 13 new investment decisions, reaching a value of EUR 116 million. Our portfolio grew by EUR 34 million from the year-end of 2023, landing at EUR 756 million. The USD and EUR reference rates continued to remain at a high level. This […]
Read moreSeptember 10, 2024
Taking Finnfund’s biodiversity work to the next level
This spring and summer, bees were again very few in my garden, and alarming news about declining species populations, 69% on average (WWF Living Planet), made it to the headlines. Everywhere I’ve been to, I see signs of human influence and habitat conversion. On the positive side, some success stories have been reported too, such as […]
Read moreAugust 26, 2024
Opportunities in Ukraine – Finnfund targets projects where Finnish companies are involved
Over two years have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine. At the moment, Russia occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, and there is no resolution in sight. There are multiple different scenarios for the future, but the core expectation among international analysts is a protracted war. The conflict is likely to change into a stalemate […]
Read moreAugust 5, 2024
CFO Insight into Q1 2024
Our Annual Report 2023 has been published. As Jaakko Kangasniemi, Finnfund’s CEO and Managing Director, puts it: happy to say that despite the global and local economic and political challenges, the year was a successful one. As explained further in the Annual Report and our press release, in 2023, Finnfund exceeded its target for new […]
Read moreJune 24, 2024
Impact investor is never (completely) satisfied
When you are in the business of impact investing and work on impact and sustainability, you can never be completely satisfied with your current stage. The industry has been evolving very rapidly from pretty niche do-good-businesses to credible and powerful mainstream investment strategies of large asset owners. The one who stays still gets rapidly pushed […]
Read moreApril 19, 2024
Gender-based violence and harassment can be difficult to identify
Gender analysis is an integral part of each investment decision at Finnfund, and one of the aspects that we aim to mitigate is the possibility of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the potential investee company. It is one of the most harmful forms of gender inequality and unfortunately affects millions of women and girls […]
Read moreFebruary 29, 2024
CFO insight into Q3 2023
Finnfund’s investment portfolio continued to grow in the third quarter of 2023, reaching a value of EUR 729 million, which is an increase of EUR 31 million (+4%) from the year-end 2022. During the first nine months of the year, 28 new investment decisions were made worth EUR 221 million. In the third quarter of the year, […]
Read moreDecember 21, 2023
Cracking the climate risk code in credit risk management
Climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy lead to costs for companies. They are therefore one factor determining companies’ credit or investment risk. For the financial sector, climate risk and how to handle it in credit risk analysis has been a hot topic for some years now. It is not an easy task, […]
Read moreDecember 15, 2023
Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
As the world is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is time for us at Finnfund to reflect on our work with human rights. Thru our human rights due diligence processes, we have identified and mitigated the actual and potential adverse human rights impacts […]
Read moreDecember 11, 2023
How investing in digital infrastructure and solutions helps reduce the gender gap
Finnfund’s Digital Infrastructure and Solutions team was established only a couple of years ago, but we have a great spirit of getting things done and we have achieved a lot already during our first years of operation. We have identified three needs or issues that our investments seek to solve: 1) access to basic mobile […]
Read moreNovember 29, 2023