Automatic translation: Originally published in Finnish 30/08/2026, 06:00 GMT. Give feedback here.

A new blog series discusses life on the stock exchange from a company's perspective

Costs related to stock market life are being chatted about again. I agree with many that listing in Finland is far too expensive. On the other hand, the direct costs of simply being listed are, in my view, relatively modest compared to the benefits of listing, already in the scale of a 20-million-euro revenue company like Inderes.

As various rumors circulate about the bureaucratic bogeyman of stock market life, I asked our financial administration team to break down all the costs associated with Inderes being listed. I present the results here at an aggregate level. As a direct comparator, we act primarily as First North companies of the same size class. For main list companies with market caps in the hundreds of millions, the costs are in a completely different category. Many of the costs of being listed are directly or indirectly linked to the company's market cap and listing choice (main list or First North).

Inderes is listed on the Nasdaq First North marketplace, with a current market cap of approximately EUR 30 million. We operate in four different countries, have 120 employees, an annual revenue of EUR 20 million, and apply FAS accounting. As a product house for investor communications, we invest relatively heavily in communications relative to our size, so we could also do some things with lower costs. A zombie company running stock market life in maintenance mode saves a few tens of thousands of euros, but gets no benefits from being listed.

Direct costs of being listed

The majority of the costs consist of the following items in random order: the share register (Euroclear), the stock exchange's annual fee, the Certified Advisor required for First North companies, and research services. In addition, smaller expenses are represented by dividend payment, the supervisory fee, the insider management tool, and other incidental costs. These add up to an annual bill of EUR 113,499.

We also "buy" the following services from ourselves: an investor website with full maintenance services, event production and webcasts for interim reports, the implementation of a hybrid annual general meeting, a press release distribution system, and the outsourcing of statutory IR processes. Let's add these on top at list prices: EUR 68,680 per year.

The total bill is therefore EUR 182,179. As a sanity check, I will also send out a round of messages to a few stock exchange colleagues asking how much they estimate their own costs to be? On the First North list, I get answers in the same ballpark, whereas for main list companies with market caps in the hundreds of millions, the costs easily start to be double.

Indirect costs – rigor and structure or unnecessary bureaucracy?

What about the indirect costs of stock market life? Could we run our administrative team with lighter resources if we were not listed? A quick question to the CFO and the lawyer. The answer is no, the team could not be downsized. Inderes handles financial administration and legal matters almost entirely with internal resources with a team of around six full-time employees. The work is certainly more demanding and the team's responsibilities heavier, which presumably means higher salaries in listed companies as well. In my experience, stock market life has brought professionalism and structure to the company's financial administration in a good way.

The company's Board of Directors needs to be of a slightly higher caliber, and board fees are higher than in an unlisted company. We have a six-member board, with all members having a robust CV and many having extensive listed company experience. If we were unlisted, we could run our board on paper or as a founders' club without any costs. However, I do not find it justified to count this as a listed company cost, because that would hardly lead to high-quality management of the company. As a listed company, the pull for good board recruitments has been surprisingly strong.

What about the time spent by the CEO and the CFO? Preparing financial reporting, ensuring administrative structures, the company's financing arrangements, communicating strategy and financial development to various stakeholders and especially to owners take time. In my world, these are tasks that the CEO and CFO should handle regardless of whether the company is listed or not.

A little over a year before Inderes' listing, the company's administrative structures were on a very thin base and creaking at the seams, and the company did not even have a CFO. The focus was on growth and client work, but the lack of structures began to be a bottleneck for growth. The decision to list forced us to fix those important administrative structures that the company should have fixed anyway if it wanted to pursue growth in a sustainable way. And being listed forces us to keep them in order. I admit that certain aspects of stock market life bring bureaucracy, and insider management processes are not only nerve-wracking but often unclear. On net, however, the experience is clearly on the positive side.