Terma's CEO Henriette Thygesen said the company is signing on. The firm supplies gear such as radars and self-protection systems for military aircraft and naval vessels, and as of the end of February, the latest figure available, its order backlog stood at roughly 6.9 billion kroner ($1 billion).
Euroclear is close to joining, said a person who asked not to be named because the talks are private. A Nordic Compass representative said an update on potential new partners will arrive later this week but did not confirm any names, and a Euroclear spokesperson would not comment. Further new members could be revealed alongside Terma and Euroclear. The alliance now counts names like EQT AB, Ericsson AB and the Novo Nordisk Foundation among its members.
Building on Mario Draghi's two-year-old report on European competitiveness, Nordic Compass is defining specific actions across four fields - defense, energy, capital markets, and deep technology.
On defense, Terma becomes a major addition alongside Norway's Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, Sweden's Saab AB and Finland's Patria Oyj. Thygesen said the alliance could serve as a hands-on forum to convert the region's strengths into tangible defense projects. "Now that all the Nordic countries are members of NATO, there is also a shared ambition to build a strong defense," she told Bloomberg. "There is a real opportunity for closer cooperation, whether in industry, technology or procurement."
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The roster, which counts Nasdaq Inc. among its members, has been crafting ways to simplify how the region raises and trades capital. Bloomberg News reported in August that these include a proposal for a single, unified stock exchange. The group is also exploring an investment fund to address a financing gap that often forces scaling companies to look outside Europe.
Euroclear, which runs much of the settlement infrastructure behind trading in Sweden and Finland, has outlined plans to expand to other Scandinavian countries starting with Denmark. Its addition could support Nordic Compass's reported ambition to better integrate Scandinavia's capital markets. Competing group Euronext NV runs the Oslo stock exchange as well as settlement systems in Norway and Denmark. According to a regional executive who spoke to Bloomberg last month, it backs greater Nordic market integration, yet it remains outside the alliance.
The bottom line: tighter defense ties plus cleaner market plumbing could influence how Nordic firms win contracts and access funding. Watch for the partner update this week and for November's summit, where the group is expected to detail its agenda and bring forward concrete proposals.
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