We study the effects of foreign takeovers on firm performance, skill premium and compensation practices following Finland’s deregulation of foreign ownership in the mid-1990s. We find large effects on wages at the industry and local labor-market level with an identification strategy using foreign ownership patterns in Sweden to instrument acquisitions in Finland. We find more modest increases in wages at firm-level using event-studies. The comparison of labor-market and firm-level results suggests that foreign ownership has spillover effects to firms remaining domestically-owned.