What are the projects that you are most proud of working on over the past 12 months?

The past 12 months have been very busy with tightened regulatory environment and tightened FIN- FSA guidance on many matters. However, we are lucky in Finland that we have a long tradition of open dialogue market participants and the FIN-FSA, and therefore many legal interpretation issues may be solved in a good manner with them.

We also secured new €154m senior secured loan arrangement with Deutsche Bank AG to our eQ Community Properties Fund – and prior to that the fund also extended a €253m senior secured loan facility with its existing lenders Nordea Bank, Danske Bank, Swedbank and Aktia. Deutsche Bank is a new lender in eQ real estate funds.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Three words – focus, focus, focus. Whenever there are instability or crisis, first thing is to deeply analyze the core reason behind the situation, then identify the options available and for last put all focus on the execution of the best possible option at hand.

Who is someone that has had a great impact on your career success?

Here I have to pay tribute to my former superior Mr. Mikko Koskimies, who passed away late last year. Mikko was an inspirational leader, who was not afraid to put the goal to heights most people couldn’t even think of and get the best out of everyone working with him. Mikko’s strength was to have strict focus on the chosen path and extremely efficient execution.

What do you derive the most satisfaction from in your work?

Working with very intelligent people, seeing a team working seamlessly together and of course all this leading to projects that have worked even better than anticipated.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

The eQ’s legal team played big role in an acquisition of Icecapital Asset Management in 2012, which was in many ways a game-chancing transaction within the Finnish asset management industry.

Further, my team has played an essential role later on in smaller add-on acquisitions of niche fund managers, which have turned out to be profitable part of eQ’s business.