A Lesson from two Failed Foreign Investments: the Foreign (Ad)Venture of two Finnish State-Owned Enterprises

Abstract

As an organisational failure may teach more than an organisational success, this article describes the failed foreign investments of two Finnish stateowned enterprises (SOEs), namely Sonera and Stora Enso. In 2000, Sonera acquired a mobile phone licence in Germany and Italy for USD 4,000 million. Two years later, it turned out that the licence was worthless. In turn, Stora Enso acquired an American paper firm for USD 5,000 million in 2000, but seven years later Stora Enso sold this US unit at a loss of USD 2,000–3,000 million. These two cases reveal that the major reason for these failures was the inability of SOE management to predict business development. Other major reasons for failure were the conflicting motives of the management and the company (the main shareholder), and inadequate state control. Passive control of the state may encourage SOE management to exercise adventurous investment policies and take major risks. In Sonera’s case, unrealistic risk taking led to serious financial difficulties, and finally, to a forced sale of the entire group to Telia, the Swedish telecom company. Stora Enso’s stronger financial position saved it from an organisational failure. A lesson to policy-makers: a responsible minister and the minister’s subordinates should exercise a more active ownership policy and keep the political interests of his/her party subordinate to the strategic interests of the state. Recent public discussion on SOE governance in Finland reveals that the Finnish Government still experiences difficulties in fully digesting the wisdom of the OECD Guidelines of Corporate Governance of StateOwned Enterprises.

Keywords

• foreign investment
• finnish state-owned enterprises
• organizational failure
• state control
• sonera
• stora enso
• fortum