A Single Nordic Exchange: Why Are the Nordic Countries Seeking Their Own Market?
Large companies and investors from the Nordic countries are planning to create a single stock exchange, the Nordic stock exchange. The aim is to make the region’s capital market more visible to investors and give local companies an alternative venue, so that fewer of them seek financing in the United States.
How and why the initiative emerged
The initiative to create the exchange came from Nordic Compass, a young alliance established in May 2026 by 30 major companies and investment funds from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The alliance is chaired by Jyrki Katainen, the former prime minister of Finland.
Finnish innovation fund Sitra is one of the alliance’s founding members. The list includes Wallenberg Investments, Aker, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Nordea, Saab, SEB, Nokia and others, as well as Nasdaq Nordic, the North European arm of the US exchange operator.
Bloomberg was the first to report, in late August, that the alliance was working on a proposal to create a single stock-market platform for the region. According to the news agency, the idea is to make the Nordic market appear to investors as a larger and more unified investment environment.
Nordic Compass's representative Stine Kromann Dragsted confirmed Bloomberg’s report to Oninvest but declined to provide further details about the initiative. The proposals may be presented at the Nordic Compass Summit in Gothenburg on 4–5 November 2026, according to the alliance representative’s response.
Dragsted added that Nordic Compass is also considering another initiative: the creation of a regional investment fund to provide scale-up financing for fast-growing companies in the capital markets. The fund’s size and launch date have not been specified. Jyrki Katainen, chair of the alliance’s board, did not respond to Oninvest’s email.
Nasdaq did not respond to Oninvest’s questions about the Nordic Compass initiative. In a comment to Oninvest, a representative of Euronext said that the group welcomed initiatives aimed at improving the global competitiveness of Nordic capital markets.
“Euronext welcomes initiatives aimed at making Nordic capital markets even more competitive globally,” the Euronext representative said.
The group’s representative emphasised that its experience has demonstrated the benefits of bringing markets and liquidity together through our federal model, a single technology platform and a single liquidity pool. This approach combines the strengths of local markets with the benefits of scale, providing issuers and investors with greater access to capital, deeper liquidity and stronger connectivity across Europe.
Why Nordic companies seek funding in the US
Sweden, Denmark and Finland have stock exchanges that are part of the Nasdaq Nordic system. As of the second quarter of 2026, 675 companies were listed on those markets.
In Norway, Oslo Børs is owned by the pan-European group Euronext. Around 300 companies are listed on the exchange.
In April this year, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Norway’s market had become one of the beneficiaries of the war in Iran. It had gained nearly 28% since the beginning of the year. By comparison, the S&P 500 had gained only some 10% over the same period, while the STOXX Europe 600 was up by 7,6%. The Norwegian index also recorded the strongest performance among the Nordic exchanges.
The Oslo OBX index is dominated by the energy and financial sectors. Its largest components are Equinor, DNB and Kongsberg Gruppen.
In Sweden’s OMX Stockholm 30 index, the largest weights are held by investment group Investor AB, at around 10–12% of the index, followed by Volvo, at around 8%, and industrial group Atlas Copco, at 7.5%. The Stockholm exchange’s index has risen 13,7% since the beginning of the year.
Finland’s OMX Helsinki 25 index is made up primarily of companies from the industrial, telecommunications and financial sectors. Its most prominent constituents include Nokia, KONE and Nordea. The index is up by more then 15% since the beginning of the year.
Pharmaceuticals and the industrial and logistics sectors play a particularly important role in Denmark’s OMX Copenhagen 25. Its largest components include pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which is now called Novo, logistics group DSV and Danske Bank. The Danish exchange’s index has risen by around only by 1,5% since the beginning of the year.
Why do these markets need to be brought together? Nordic Compass estimates that the combined economy of the Nordic countries is the world’s 12th-largest. Pension and sovereign wealth funds in the region manage nearly $4 trillion, while more than $175 billion flows into these funds every year. The region is home to more than 100 unicorns and thousands of companies that have received venture financing.
At the same time, Nordic Compass acknowledges that there is a substantial gap in the amount of capital available compared with the US. By way of comparison, the US stock market was worth around $75 trillion as of 1 July 2026, according to estimates cited by the media. That figure was larger than the combined value of the world’s next 13 largest stock markets.
Nordic Compass calculated that, when compared with the US and adjusted for population, the Nordic region is underinvesting by around $48 billion a year in technology sectors alone. The problem is particularly visible in venture capital: according to the alliance, the average investment per round is approximately $27 million in the US, compared with $6 million in the Nordic countries.
Nordic Compass believes that the problem is that existing capital in the Nordic countries is not being connected effectively enough with growing companies. As a result, local businesses often go to the US to raise funding.
Examples include the Swedish companies Spotify, Klarna and Oatly, all of which listed on US exchanges. Finnish company IQM Quantum Computers has a dual listing on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Helsinki. Another Finnish company, smart-ring maker Oura, is so far only preparing for a US listing.
Integrating capital markets vs merging exchanges
The Nordic region already has strong market traditions, sophisticated investors and successful local ecosystems, a representative of Euronext said in a comment to Oninvest.
Stockholm Business School and Stockholm University professor Björn Hagströmer agrees, while expanding on the point. From a trading perspective, he says, the markets in the region are already considerably integrated. The exchanges in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki already use the same trading technology and share many features of Nasdaq’s market structure. Oslo Børs is the only stock exchange that operates separately.
However, a single technology platform may make access to trading easier, but it will not by itself make Swedish investors suddenly start trading Finnish, Danish and Norwegian stocks, or Finnish investors start trading Danish stocks, he says.
I would distinguish between integrating the Nordic capital markets and simply merging the stock exchanges.
Investors’ decisions are influenced not only by commissions and ease of access, but also by currencies, language, differences in national tax systems, securities legislation and post-trade arrangements across the Nordic countries, as well as their familiarity with companies and even their individual investment habits, Hagströmer explains.
The attraction of the US market reflects much more than exchange structure. For companies, what matters is the depth of the market, the range of specialised investors, access to financing, analyst coverage, visibility and opportunities for further growth.
Moreover, a Nordic exchange alone would not have been enough to persuade companies such as Klarna or Spotify to choose Stockholm over New York, Hagströmer adds.
What would a single exchange offer?
Against this background, but only if cross-border investment within the Nordics actually increases, says Hagströmer. Presenting the Nordic market as a larger and more unified market could improve international visibility and make it easier for companies to reach investors throughout the region.
According to Hagströmer, the main potential benefit of a single exchange would be scale. Larger exchanges tend to have lower costs per trade, which could benefit liquidity, and it is also possible that a more integrated Nordic exchange could broaden the investor base for the stocks listed there.
A single Nordic exchange could increase investors’ interest in the markets and stocks of neighbouring countries, says Finnish investor Peter Seligson. Oninvest analyst Aldiyar Anuarbekov agrees. According to his calculations, the market capitalisation of companies listed across Nasdaq Nordic and the Baltic countries stood at €2.13 trillion at the end of August 2026.
Anuarbekov adds that Nasdaq already provides common trading systems and harmonised market rules. In his view, the additional benefit should therefore come from making cross-border investment and settlement easier. Bringing the exchanges together, by itself, does not guarantee higher company valuations or liquidity comparable to that of the US market.
I would expect both some redistribution of investment within Europe and inflows from global portfolios as they diversify. For Europe as a whole, the benefit will come if the project increases the amount of financing available to companies, rather than merely redistributing trading activity between exchanges.
Hagströmer believes that direct competition for listings between European exchanges is fairly limited. Most Nordic companies that go public still list in their home market, while a small number of particularly large or internationally oriented firms choose the US. So basically listings and investment remain to a considerable degree national.
The blue-chip segment of a new exchange would therefore essentially consist of the same companies that investors can already invest in today, he adds.
