Profile: Jukka Ruuska
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By Kari Räisänen
Jukka Ruuska has served with the stock exchange for an exceptionally long time - already from 2000. "My job has changed so much that I have not needed to change employers", says Ruuska, age 44.
Six years ago Ruuska was hired to the post of CEO of the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Now he is both the CEO of the Stockholm Stock Exchange, and the acting CEO of OMX, which is responsible for the stock exchange units of sox countries.
At the same time, Stockholm has become the new home city of his family, although Ruuska did spend 65 days last year in Helsinki.
Ruuska has a visible role in Stockholm, and in public he has often been called a super bourse boss.
Ruuska says that he has been surprised at how well the Swedes have accepted a new Finnish face. "Finns have a good reputation in Sweden. On the other hand, I have noticed that in the Baltic Sea region, it is easiest to work together specifically with the Swedes."
Ruuska first became interested in Nordic cooperation already at school. Ruuska, who was once a sympathiser of progressive leftist causes, also worked with Pohjola Norden, the central organisation for citizens’ cooperation among the Nordic Countries.
However, at that time Ruuska did not speak Swedish very well. "It was terribly painful", Ruuska said in a book by Juha-Pekka Raeste about corporate lawyers.
Already before becoming a lawyer, Ruuska began work at KOP bank. The bank had offered him training for international activities. Ruuska was one of the 12 people who were chosen out of a field of 5,000 applicants.
In the bank Ruuska’s job description changed several times until he left in 1994, during the deep recession, along with Peter Fagernäs to set up Prospectus, a company specialised in corporate finance.
From the world of banking Ruuska leapt into a new field, joining Finnet, a conglomerate of local telephone companies, and from there, he became a corporate planner at the Helsinki Telephone Company HPY. During the crazy years of mobile telephony, Ruuska was turning HPY from an association into a listed company.
Ruuska did not have to experience the subsequent tribulations of telecommunications operators: in January 2000 he moved on to the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
"I had good luck. Nobody can say that I would have predicted the downturn of telecommunications operators.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.10.2006
More on this subject:
 President of OMX Nordic Marketplaces expects common list to attract new investors
Helsingin Sanomat
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