A rich man's housewarming bash

Björn Wahlroos

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By Antti Blåfield
     
      Björn Wahlroos, CEO of the Sampo Group, organised a housewarming party.
      Six years ago Wahlroos bought the Åminne Manor in Halikko. The most famous previous owner had been Count Gustav Mauritz Armfelt.
      This year will be the 250th anniversary of the birth of Armfelt, and the housewarming party was called a 250th birthday party.
      Attending the bash were the Swedish royal couple, and the king's sisters, the cream of Swedish business, the financial elite of Finland's Swedish-speakers, the most important leading figures of Finnish business life, foreign businessmen, the most important of whom was the Director-General of Deutsche Bank, as well as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance.
      Only two were absent: President Tarja Halonen and - an interesting item of business news - representatives of the Swedish Wallenberg family.
      The absence of the President was also conspicuous. The event was a private affair, but it was also a commemoration of a significant Finnish statesman, with the head of state of the neighbouring country in attendance.
     
The party at Åminne begs a comparison.
      Armfelt served two masters, and at times he would fall into disfavour, but would always return to the grace of those in power.
      In the last years of Swedish King Gustav III, Armfelt was "de facto his most important advisor", as Wahlroos himself writes in the Swedish part of the bilingual book "Åminne", which he published.
      This is one of the parts where the Swedish language text slightly deviates from the original, written by historian Petri Lavonen. "If I have allowed myself excessive liberties in my translation work, it is because I am also the publisher of this work", Wahlroos writes in the foreword of his book.
      In the power struggle that followed the murder of Gustav III, Armfelt ended up on the losing side and went into exile.
      He got back into the favour of the court in Stockholm, but he never found a common language with the first king of the House of Bernadotte and eventually he returned to Finland.
      When Finland was annexed by Russia, Armfelt managed to establish close relations with Tsar Alexander I. He had a significant role when the position of the new Grand Duchy was established.
     
Bror Wahlroos was a young professor of economics when Mika Tiivola, Director-General of the Union Bank of Finland, invited him onto the board of directors of his bank. In the battle between the Union Bank and Kansallis Bank over the position of the mightiest bank in Finland, Wahlroos was, in the language of the 19th century, Tiivola's supplementary chamber ruffian.
      The Union Bank of Finland won, but the recession weakened that bank as well. After Tiivola retired, Wahlroos fell out of favour and left. When he went, he was given a small section of the bank, which he turned into Finland's most important investment bank.
      In 1997, Postipankki and Finnish Export Credit Ltd. were merged to form Leonia, and later Sampo was merged with that. Wahlroos was put forward for the management; in that connection, he became the individual owner with the largest holding of the state's cooperative bank.
      Wahlroos has served his new master - the Finnish state - quite well; the fully state-owned Leonia was worth EUR 1.4 billion. Now the state owns only about 14 per cent of Sampo, and the value of the holding is EUR 1.6 billion. In addition, the state has received dividends and sales income to the tune of EUR 3 million.
      Wahlroos himself has added to his not inconsiderable wealth, and this is why he could afford to arrange a party where money was no obstacle to self-expression.
     
The language of the party was Swedish, in spite of the group of international visitors. Perhaps that is why Horace Engdahl, a member of the Academy of Sweden, who delivered the Armfelt Lecture, had been instructed to speak briefly and in a light manner.
      When the Swedish-language roots and the mutual connections had been established for those who spoke other languages, it was the time to send a message to Sweden.
      In the park of the manor house, an orchestra compiled from individual players of the Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra played the Karelia Suite by Sibelius. Between the musical numbers, a light show arranged by Ekku Peltomäki was seen, and when the third part of the composition - the Alla marcia - rang out, the night sky filled with fireworks, according to those who took part in the party.
      "Tacky" is what some might imagine on the basis of what has been described. However, some might have sensed in the August night that the class society had made a comeback.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.8.2007


Links:
  Björn Wahlroos (Wikipedia)
  Count Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt 1757-1814 (Wikipedia)

ANTTI BLÅFIELD / Helsingin Sanomat
antti.blafield@hs.fi