The State Pension Fund of Finland — Valtion Eläkerahasto (VER) — is losing its chief executive officer of the last five years, but regaining its former chief who has 12 years of experience leading the €20bn fund.
Timo Viherkenttä confirmed to IPE he is leaving the fund, which acts as a buffer fund for the central government’s staff pension obligations, at the end of February to take up a teaching and research post at Aalto University, which is located in Espoo in Finland’s capital region.
At that point Timo Löyttyniemi, who in December ended his non-renewable five-year term as vice chair of The Single Resolution Board (SRB) in Brussels – the central resolution authority within the European Union’s Banking Union (BU) – will return to run VER five years after leaving the Helsinki-based job he held for 12 years.
After leaving his post in Belgium last month, Löyttyniemi said in a post on LinkedIn he planned to take a “nice long break with the family”.
He also expressed pride in the SRB’s collective achievements, writing that among other things, the Single Resolution Fund had been built up to €33bn within a short period; that more than 350 people had been hired and a €55bn transitional period safety net had been constructed.
Viherkenttä’s move can also be seen as a return, in that he worked in academia for the first 10 years following his graduation, both as a researcher and lecturer on tax law at the University of Helsinki.
Following that, he worked in several different roles before coming to VER in 2015.
Viherkenttä spent four years as a judge at Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court and eight as deputy CEO of Finland’s largest pension fund, Keva.
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