"New Nordics" Economy Becomes Center of Gravity for Global Platform to Accelerate European Productivity, Values-Based Good Growth and Business Cooperation
Stockholm Business Summit Follows Week of Davos Tumult that Catapults Nordic and Arctic Countries to Geopolitical Center Stage of Strategic Competition
STOCKHOLM, Jan. 29, 2026 -- Over 80 global, Nordic, Baltic and Arctic community business leaders, regional academic, science and technology innovators gathered in Stockholm' historic Grand Hotel, 28-29 January, days after Davos tumult over U.S.-European relations, Greenland and tariff tensions. Leading Nordic, Baltic and Fortune 500 business figures converged to launch The Origination Finance Studios, a global convening platform to expedite business and societal scale dialogue and solution sets. The Origination Finance Studios will be anchored in the ascendent Nordic-Baltic economic leadership space to accelerate new financial models and industry blueprints needed to re-engineer long-term healthy growth and prosperity – for the many rather than the few. Building upon Stockholm's historic industrial and banking strengths and its status as Europe's new "capital of capital" for the reinvigoration of European markets' ($113 billion in fresh capital raised in the past five years alone), today's Origination Finance Studio and future convenings will expand to strategic geographies especially in the Global South, with India first, among others.
Distinguished participants include Henrik Henriksson, CEO of Stegra, Sweden's green steel scale-up, Hans Vestberg, Board Member of Blackrock and former Chair & CEO of Verizon, Jakob Stausholm, former CEO of Rio Tinto, Niclas Mårtensson, CEO, Stena Line Group, Annette Selmeier, Co-Founder, Effective Energy Invest GmbH, Risto Siilasmaa, Founder of F-Secure and former Chair and Interim CEO of Nokia, Tõnis Saar, Director of NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (CCDCoE), Line Gordon, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Center, Liza Jonson, CEO Swedbank Robur, and Bridget Fawcett, Global Head, Sustainability & Corporate Transitions Investment Banking at CITI.
Origination Founder, Dr Osvald Magne Bjelland, and the Origination team have drawn together many of the world's most creative business minds, scientific, and industry thinkers. The Finance Studio approach emerges out of Bjelland's #1 Amazon Bestseller Book, HOPE for Life on Our Planet: Inspiration for Seven Generations, a two-year undertaking to distill the insights of over 60 co-authors from business, scientific, environment, artistic and religious leaders from around the world including three Nobel Peace Laureates – two-time president of Costa Rica Óscar Arias Sánchez, Iran's Narges Mohammadi, and Ukraine's Oleksandra Matviichuk – and business luminaries, such as Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, Hans Vestberg, Blackrock Board Member and former Chair and CEO of Verizon, and Lord Browne of Madingley, Founder and Chairman of BeyondNetZero and former CEO of BP. Ambassador Jakob Kiefer, an Origination partner, will serve as the Stockholm Studio's Director.
Stockholm programme speakers addressed four themes with the aim to secure specific implementable projects out of deliberations:
- Energy Transition: Chaired by Christian Rynning-Tønnesen, Senior Partner and CEO of Aker-ICP Infrastructure and former CEO of Statkraft, with contributions from Shaun Kingsbury CBE, Chief Investment Officer of Just Climate and Chairman of Stegra, Jakob Stausholm, former CEO of Rio Tinto, Tom Jensen, Founder T1Energy, Magnus Asbjörnsson, CEO Reykjavik Geothermal and Financial Respondents Jan Olsson, CEO, Deutsche Bank AG Nordics and Krishnan Narayanan, Founder & Chairman, The Fifty Group.
- Mobility and Connectivity: Chaired by Marcus Högblom, VP of ABB Marine, with contributions from Amy Marshall, Partner and Managing Director Europe, Xynteo, Niclas Mårtensson, CEO, Stena Line Group, Max Blatt, CEO LOTS Group, Frode Dahl, Assistant Director, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Financial Respondents, Johan Haeggman, former CEO, Traton Financial Services and Annette Selmeier, Co-Founder, Effective Energy Invest GmbH.
- Security & Resilience: Chaired by Risto Siilasmaa, Founder of F-Secure, former Chair and Interim CEO of Nokia, and Founder and Chair of WithSecure, with contributions from Tõnis Saar, Director of NATO CCDCoE, Jessica Öberg, CEO of Combitech, Birger Steen, CEO of NORSAR, Thomas Brännström, CTO, Cisco and financial respondents, Victoria Vysotina, UBS.
- Food Systems, Health & Water: Chaired by Dr Gunhild Stordalen, Founder, EAT Foundation will include contributions from Professor Line Gordon, Director, and Professor Lisen Schultz, Deputy Director, Stockholm Resilience Center, Magnus Björsne, CEO of AstraZeneca Bioventure Hub, Johan Seimer, CEO Chromafora, Jakob Just-Bomholt, CEO of Elekta, Matts Johansen, Chairman of Aker Qrill and CEO of Aker BioMarine and financial respondents, Liza Jonson, CEO Swedbank Robur, and Karl Nagy, Founder Kabena Group.
- The Origination Finance Studio also brings together world-leading academic expertise on blended finance with Professor Caroline Flammer of Columbia University. Professor Phoebe Koundouri, renowned economist and Member of the Nominating Committee for the Nobel Prize in Economics, outlines pathways to accelerated change. Professor Line Gordon, Stockholm Resilience Center Director, poses human & planet-friendly solutions.
- Against an investment landscape increasingly shaped by geopolitical and macroeconomic factors, participants will hear from H.E. Mikaela Kumlin-Granit, Sweden's Ambassador to the European Union, Dr Parag Khanna, CEO of AlphaGeo, Singapore, Peter Dahlen, Managing Director of AmCham Sweden, Ketan Patel, Chairman of Force for Good, Nick Stansbury, Head of Climate Solutions at Legal & General Investment Management, and Sebastian Frisk, Chief of Staff at EQT.
Origination Finance Studio summit leaders distilled current experiences and prescriptions:
At this critical juncture, green steel pioneer and CEO Henrik Henriksson reported from the frontline on how Stegra has been able to finance one of the largest industrial scale-up projects in the world. He shared both achievements and challenges with funding a multi-billion dollar company from scratch and an update on the progress that has been made to be able to deliver green steel at scale from Boden, Sweden. "Stegra is a purpose-built company which aims to accelerate the decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries. It is also fundamentally an example of how capital can be structured to solve some of mankind's common challenges," said Henrik Henriksson, CEO of Stegra.
"The concept of the NEW Nordics emerged in the process leading up to the Studio. This region combines historic stability with innovation and good growth. Collectively, this 35-million-strong area wields economic influence comparable to a major G20 country, ranking among the top 15 economies globally. In fact, Sweden alone had more stock listings than Germany, France, Spain combined for each year of the last decade. "If the rest of the EU performed like Sweden, we would not be talking about a competitiveness problem," observed Dr Osvald Bjelland, Origination Founder and Chairman.
"Closing the technology gap is central to Europe's resilience," stated Risto Siilasmaa, Founder of F-Secure, former Chair and Interim CEO of Nokia, and Founder and Chair of WithSecure. "We need to map where critical capabilities are missing, quantify the investment required to fill those gaps, and deploy both public and private resources strategically. That is the core of ensuring the New Nordics and Europe can withstand systemic shocks and maintain competitiveness."
"Energy transition projects must move from prototypes to full-scale deployment. Our job is to identify which technologies are ready, where financing bottlenecks exist, and how to structure investment to de-risk early-stage deployment at scale," noted Christian Rynning- Tønnesen, Senior Partner and CEO of Aker-ICP Infrastructure and former CEO of Statkraft.
"Europe does not lack innovation; it lacks the capital and risk appetite to invest and scale projects at speed and over time. For long-term investors, the question is not willingness but coordination of capital and creating an EU Inc.," asserted Sebastian Frisk, Partner and Head of EQT Growth.
"Planet and human-centric capitalism driven by sustainable interaction between nature, society, and the economy is a force for good serving generations to come. It's a pathway to more and greater profits and returns for all stakeholders – humanity and nature," prescribed Dr Phoebe Koundouri, Professor at University of Athens and Cambridge University and Member of the Nominating Committee for the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Stockholm Finance Studio Programme:
https://www.originationstudio.com
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