Finland follows suit of the majority of the EU countries as the proposed changes introduced by Government Bill 238/2018 to corporate legislation regarding minimum share capital requirement of Finnish private limited liability companies were approved on 8 February 2019. The present requirement for a Finnish private limited liability company to have a minimum share capital of EUR 2,500 will be lifted as of 1 July 2019. Beginning from 1 July 2019, incorporating and registering a Finnish private limited liability company no longer requires its founding shareholders to make a payment to the company’s share capital. This will not, however, affect Finnish public limited liability companies which are still required to have a minimum share capital of EUR 80,000.
The removal of the minimum share capital requirement will also bring about indirect effects to, for instance, the incorporation and registration of a limited liability company, provisions on the reduction of the share capital as well as the provisions regarding the loss of the company’s equity.
Going forward, incorporating and registering a Finnish private limited liability company will be considerably more streamlined as the requirement to open a bank account to deposit the share capital will no longer form an obstacle to get a company up and running.