Tuokko Group
History
The 1970s
After completing his degree in becoming an auditor as certified by the Chamber of Commerce, Yrjö Tuokko founded an auditing firm bearing his name in 1971, called Tilintarkastus Yrjö Tuokko Ky. Operations began as a one-man bureau from an attic room in Espoo, Finland. Our first auditing clients were in the transport sector representing national organisations and companies. This was due to the fact that before his degree, Yrjö Tuokko occupied different financial management positions for nearly 10 years (companies).
Soon, however, operations expanded and the attic room was amended by the 70's to the middle of the city of Helsinki. The office at that time employed about 10 people and consisted of a customer base of almost 500 different types of corporate structure
The 1980s
By the early 1980s, as business grew steadily and staff increased, the company faced another situation where we needed to relocate to larger premises. In 1984, we acquired ownership of two-storey beach villa called Villa Neovius in Kulosaari, Helsinki to use as our operational base. Upon relocating, we consisted of 20 people, whilst our number of customers approached 1000. Our customer base largely focused on the growth of the SME sector firms. Already by then, however, a significant part of our clientele consisted of large companies.
In the late 1980s, we formed an inspection group specialising in business restructuring. In hindsight, this appropriately coincided with the 1990s recession. Internationalisation in the field of auditing began in the 1980s, as international auditing chains set up operations in Finland. Our first international partner was the Grant Thornton chain, with whom we began co-operating at the end of the 1980s and continued to do so until the mid-1990s.
The 1990s
The end of the 1980s and especially the first half of the 1990s, was marked of recklessness in the financial world. Mainly corporate debt, foreign borrowings, rapidly increasing prices, rising interest rates and values, in addition to more than a 30% devaluation, were all factors which brought along an unprecedented economic recession. This led to thousands of business failures and therefore, the reclaiming of assets to the extent that some of the units considered as an institution of our economy disappeared off the map.
This led to the development whereby our special inspection group increased to 10-15 people. We have been involved in over 1500 special examinations, nearly all of which represent domestic bankruptcies in the billions. Bankruptcy itself is a phenomenon of economic life, and the majority of bankruptcies are the inevitable consequence of changed circumstances.
After Estonia gained independence in 1992, we set up our subsidiary in Tallinn (link Tuokko OU). Estonia became independent after the Finnish companies operating in Estonia grew, and we saw the need for a financial management office which understood Finnish businesses. This office currently employs about 20 people, and its services include corporate financial management and auditing.
In the mid-1990s, we started our cooperation with the Deloitte chain. During the start of our cooperation, our number of staff at that time already included over 40 people, thus we moved to Munkkiniemi in Helsinki. Villa Neovius still remains with the company.
The initialization during the 1990s of EU institutions and EU-project financing is also part of our experience. We operated as the European Investment Bank's auditors for 5 years, serving one year as chairman of the auditors. In this context, we also participated in the auditing of the use of EU funds in several member countries, including Holland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.