This week I am leading a study tour of Hong Kong University MBA students and we all met up in Helsinki. I enjoy these trips, not just because we visit interesting companies and institutions, but also it is extremely rewarding to make a contribution to these very smart, interested and open minded students. All this would not be possible of course, without hosts and guest speakers. We had the privilege to visit Nokia in Espoo first and get great insights into the company’s development, turn around and current developments. On the same day we got an overview on Vaisala’s data company xWeather and finally learned at Enter Espoo on the Aalto University Campus the concept behind the City of Dep Tech, ranging from Quantum computing to promising software startups. The Finish-Hong Kong Chamber and the Hong Kong Trade and Development council were our next stops, showing the scope and ways of collaboration between Hong Kong SAR and Finland. Then Alec Arho Havrén, a former race driver, joined us with his wife Tzvetelina Havrén, a former professional tennis player, and gave a fascinating insight into the work he is doing at the Gotland Ring and beyond. Alec is passionate about the de-carbonization of traffic and founder of the World Ecological Forum. Both honored us by accepting my invitation to join our side trip to Porvoo, a finish medieval town, about an hours time from Helsinki. The final day in Helsinki we started with a tour in the Central Library in Helskinki. Here I pressed a bit my own passion of libraries on the students. This is such a fascinating place, far beyond just books, but having the mission to turn readers into doers. Then a short trip to the Bank of Finland and an introduction on the role of a National Central Bank in the Eurozone, and finally NASDAQ Nordic Helsinki. Especially in the last visit, I personally learned a lot. For example, I somehow had the concept that NASDAQ is a stock exchange for tech companies. But that’s not the case. It is an exchange for companies of any industry, and just happens to be the “new kid on the block” in comparison with New York Stock exchange and so got the listings of newer companies, but not exclusively.
Of course, April 2nd, the “Liberation Day”, and the tariff announcement of the US President Trump were a topic on the way. I tried to get my head around the way his administration calculated reciprocal tariffs. I am not an economist, but it’s easy to see that this calculation does not have much to do with determining tarifs elsewhere to define what the US defines as “countermeasures”. I just hope has to be understood as a staring point for a discussion and it is “just a number”, because that’s what it is. A spiral of counter-tariffs could be potentially quite devastating. Even the situation is different from the 1930s, sure, we get a déjà vu. And we know where that ended. In any case, there is one thing I believe the US president: we will remember April 2nd for a long time.
Tomorrow we will board the ship to Estonia, and continue our journey there.