People in Focus

Ari-Pekka Latti, Group Treasurer, Metsä Group and Co-ordinator, Finnish Association of Corporate Treasurers

Ari-Pekka Latti is the Group Treasurer of the Metsä Group, a Finnish forest industry group with a presence in international markets  whose business operations cover the entire value chain. This starts in the forests from which  the group obtains its wood supplies, continuing through to sawmills  and the wood products industry. As the name suggests, pulp mills produce the pulp (or fibre) which is the main constituent of the carton board used in high quality packaging for items such as medicine, cosmetics and food. Metsä is one of the leading producers  and users of renewable energy in Finland.

Ari-Pekka Latti began work began work in the financial markets in the early 1990s, with a primary focus on various funding roles,  firstly as the Long-term Funding Manager at SKOP Bank in Helsinki, and then joining Finnish Export Credit Ltd as Senior Manager, Treasury. In 1992 he was appointed  Deputy Director, Head of Funding, Liquidity and Investor Relations of Finland’s State Treasury, where he also served  as the Finnish representative  on the EU EFC Working Group on Government Bonds and Bills from 2001 to 2010, the year in which he joined Metsä.

The Finnish Association of Corporate Treasurers (FACT) is a small group which started about 16 years ago and now has links with some 38 companies whose corporate treasurers meet  twice a year – although currently physical meetings are of course not possible during the Covid-19 pandemic – to discuss treasury topics of current interest, and listen to prominent speakers who are often invited to give presentations. In many ways, FACT operates as a club, with no formalised structure or board of directors; it has been a member of the European Association of Corporate Treasurers (EACT) since 2005 and Ari-Pekka Latti is FACT’s representative at the European Association and sits on its board.   

Retirement  of Lisa Robins

Lisa Robins retired from Standard Chartered at the end of 2020 after a long and distinguished career with the bank, culminating in her position as Global Head of Transaction Banking. Before joining Standard Chartered she was Head of Global Transaction Banking and Vice Chair of Corporate & Investment Banking for Asia Pacific at Deutsche Bank, following  23 years  with J.P. Morgan in Hong Kong, the US and Paris.

Lisa holds a Master of Arts from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies and History from Tufts University. In 2013 she was named Transaction Banker of the Year by The Asian Banker and was awarded the same accolade in The Asset Triple A Awards in 2014, and in 2016 she was given the IBF Fellow award by the Institute of Banking and Finance Singapore.

in 2018 Lisa joined the board of APLMA, the Asia Pacific Loan Market Association, later becoming its Vice Chair. Her other advisory board positions included those of the Clearstream group and Thomson Reuters Custom Advisory (Singapore). She also sat on the boards of the Chinese subsidiary banks of both JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank while working at those institutions. Throughout her career she was active in various non-profit organisations, including co-founding CHIFRASIE in Paris, which focuses on providing seminars and training on doing business in China, and sitting on the board of OHI, a Singapore-based organisation that provides ways of experiencing art other than via museums and galleries.