Taaleri and Aktia's distribution agreement ends

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 6/24/2025 at 9:24 am EEST.

Taaleri announced this morning that it has terminated the distribution cooperation with Aktia, which was agreed in connection with the 2021 sale of Taaleri Wealth Management. Initially, the distribution cooperation was intended for Aktia to exclusively offer Taaleri's products to Finnish private investors and smaller institutions. In practice, this means that going forward, Taaleri will manage all sales to the Finnish institutional sector itself. As for sales to private investors, Taaleri has no desire or capability to manage this, and we believe that Taaleri is seeking a new partner model for this. The termination of the distribution agreement has no direct impact on Taaleri's or Aktia's numbers, as the termination of the agreement has no impact on the income distribution of previously sold funds. 

The change is not a major surprise, as the cooperation originally envisioned as strategic has been less substantial than targeted. Taaleri's greatest weakness and a key reason for the weaker-than-expected sales development has been the lack of distribution strength. Following the change, Taaleri will be free to sell its products directly to Finnish institutions, and the company will certainly further strengthen its sales capabilities. The company recently announced the appointment of Timo Teivaanmäki as its new Sales Director (starting October 13, 2025) and Shaun McWilliam as International Sales Advisor. We believe we will see further recruitments in the near future, and in our opinion, the announcement also points in this direction. In addition, we consider it likely that Taaleri aims to find a new channel to sell its products to Finnish retail investors. The loss of access to retail investors is the biggest downside of the termination for Taaleri, as especially the SolarWind funds have raised significant capital also from retail investors. The flip side of the coin, however, is the Finnish institutional sector, whose sales Taaleri inevitably sees as clearly underutilized.

For Aktia, the termination of the cooperation further highlights its weak position in alternative investments. In our view, the company needs to strengthen its position in alternative investments, and we consider building its own products using a fund-of-funds model to be the most likely approach. We do not see a need for changes in our Aktia forecasts, and we remind that, in Aktia's scale, the cooperation has ultimately been relatively small.