Helsinki-based bank Evli announced today the appointment of Petra Hakamo as Head of Sustainability. Hakamo takes on her new role after serving as Investment Manager and Head of Sustainability at Evli’s late-stage VC Evli Growth Partners, where she served as Investment Manager and Head of Sustainability.

Kim Pessala, Head of Institutional Wealth Management at Evli, said:

“A big thank you goes to our former Head of Sustainability, Outi Helenius, who took on the chief role for responsible investment at Evli for the past five years. Now it is time to pass on the responsibility and I am very happy that we have found a new Head of Sustainability, Petra Hakamo, from within Evli. Petra has strong expertise in sustainability and a good understanding of the challenges that investors face in seeking returns responsibly.”

In her new position, Hakamo will be in charge of developing Evli Group’s sustainability and responsible investment practices, across all asset classes. As the first area of development, she will set concrete action steps to reach the firm’s climate targets, which include cutting the carbon emissions of investments in half by 2030 and becoming a net zero asset manager by 2050.

Hakamo, said:

“I very much look forward to working on sustainability with the portfolio managers across all asset classes at Evli, and to further develop Evli’s sustainability practices. To date Evli has systematically developed responsible investing as one of its strategic priorities, laying out a strong foundation for future work.”

Prior to joining Evli Growth Partners, Hakamo served at financial services group SEB’s Large Corporates and Financial Institutions division, in credit analysis and business development functions. Currently, she is the Vice Chair of the ESG Working Group of the Finnish Venture Capital Association’s Sustainability Working Group.”

Hakamo identified the EU Taxonomy, climate work, and social responsibility as key trends in 2022:

“Climate work is, of course, a key area driving both the corporate and investor community. The EU taxonomy and regulatory developments will be very much on the table, in setting both climate and other environmental targets. Finally Social responsibility is also an important topic to highlight, given the new ways of working and effects of Covid.”