The Finnish State Development Company Vake became the Finnish Climate Fund just before Christmas 2020. The owner also gave the company operational guidelines and a new Board as well as an Investment Council were appointed for the Fund. You can find the earlier news about the launch of the Climate Fund and the appointments on our website.
“During the first part of the year, the Board of the Climate Fund has further developed the owner’s operational guidelines given to us in December 2020 into a strategy guiding our operations. In addition to further defining the financing operations, instrumentation as well as the investment process, we have reached the phase of finalising the contract of our first investment decision. We look forward to publishing that decision within a couple of weeks”, states Perttu Puro, the Chairman of the Board.
The previous year 2020 focused on preparing the future operations of the Climate Fund as well as potential investment targets in line with the gradually specified guidance from the owner. As Vake changed into the Climate Fund, the owner decided to transfer the shares of Altia, Nordic Morning Group, Posti Group and Vapo back into direct ownership of the state. The holding of approximately 8,3% of the shares of Neste remains with the Climate Fund, and as the operational guidelines of the company were defined, the accounting principles were changed so that the shareholdings of Neste were transferred from the current assets on the balance sheet to non-current assets. Simultaneously, fair value was chosen as the accounting valuation method for Neste’s shareholdings instead of the previous historical cost. Therefore, the book value of the holdings increased from a transfer value of approximately EUR 1.5 billion to a market value of EUR 3.8 billion.
“The Climate Fund has started its operations rapidly. We are currently preparing several investment decisions, for which our existing liquid funds of EUR 87.5 million provide a good foundation. The preparation work done during our previous Vake phase – and especially the dealflow of 275 potential investment targets collected in the company by the end of 2020 – provided a strong basis and an excellent starting point for launching the operations of the Climate Fund.”, states the CEO of the Climate Fund, Paula Laine.
Perttu Puro continues as the Chairman of the Board and Petri Peltonen as Vice Chairman of the Board. Mirva Antila, Kari Hämekoski, Mammu Kaario, Juho Korpi and Erja Turunen continue as Members of the Board.
Link to the 2020 annual report and financial statements
For more information, please contact:
Saara Mattero, Public Affairs Director, tel. 0400 114 777, saara.mattero@ilmastorahasto.fi