Banks, boards, and business elites: Freemason financial interlocks in Finland, 1960–2000

The Freemasons created a hidden and closed business elite in Finland, whose banking industry’s financial interlocks occurred mainly during the 1960s and the 2000s. Financial interlocks were robust decision-making and negotiation power positions in the Finnish economy. These board positions in the banking, finance, and insurance industries created a negotiation and influence status for board members regarding capital access, investments, and significant financial decision-making. A prosopographic database, a new database of 33 Freemasons belonging to the institutional business elite of Finland, was created to study what types of business elite careers Freemasons had and what kinds of financial interlocks they had. As a result, local financial interlocks, profession-oriented financial interlocks, C.E.O.‘s financial interlocks, board professional financial interlocks, and prominent elite financial interlocks were identified as sources of financial and investment-related decision-making power among Freemason business elite members. Thus, the Freemason business elite was not just one unified and homogenous institutional elite. It contained multiple layers of elites in the Finnish business elite, ranging from local and provincial elite to large corporation celebrities who hold domestic and global power in some industries through public limited corporation C.E.O.s and board positions. The new twenty-first-century generation business elite did not possess this heritage anymore – Freemasonry lost its status in the institutional business elite – by becoming a historical feature of some of the earlier business elite generation social clubbing.