Aalto M&A Forum

Speakers

Mikko Kosonen

Chair of the Board, Aalto University 

Dr. Mikko Kosonen is Chair of the Board of Aalto University, and previously worked as President of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra in 2008–2019. Earlier, Mikko worked in leadership positions at Nokia, for example as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Infrastructure. He is member of the Board of Technology Academy Finland, the Supervisory Board of the Smart & Clean Foundation and the Delegation of the Foundation for Economic Education’s Supporters’ Association. Mikko has published books and articles on strategic leadership and has an Honorary Professorship of the Budapest Business School.

Ilkka Hara

Chief Financial Officer, Kone Corporation

As Kone Corporation’s CFO, Ilkka Hara is responsible for the group’s financial strategy and operations, and recently also served as its interim head for the South Europe and Mediterranean region. Prior to joining Kone in 2016, Ilkka worked at Microsoft Phones as General Manager and Chief Financial Officer, and before that at Nokia Corporation in several roles in sales, marketing, business control, and finance, including M&A. He has also worked in investment banking at ABN AMRO and Morgan Stanley. Ilkka is a finance graduate of Aalto University.

Taru Weckroth

Senior Managing Consultant, M&A Community Lead, Midagon

Taru is the M&A practice lead at consultancy Midagon and an expert in M&A execution and transformative IT program management. She is an Aalto (Helsinki School of Economics) alumna and has worked in technical and leadership roles in large IT programs at international consultancies throughout her career. At Midagon, she has contributed to building a strong practice of M&A professionals who have worked in key roles in some of the most significant M&A implementations in Finland, such as the Nokia-Alcatel Lucent merger, the Neles carve-out, and the Metso-Outotec merger.

Senior International Guest

B. Espen Eckbo

Tuck Centennial Professor of Finance, Dartmouth College

Bjorn Espen Eckbo is the Tuck Centennial Professor of Finance. He studies corporate finance, with a particular emphasis on transactions in the market for corporate control (M&As and corporate restructurings), how firms raise capital to fund investments, capital structure choice, and issues in international corporate governance. Eckbo also currently serves as a research associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute and served as founding director of Tuck’s Lindenauer Center for Corporate Governance from 1999 through 2020. He teaches MBA electives in corporate finance and corporate takeovers at Tuck and a PhD course on corporate finance at the Norwegian School of Economics, where, in 2011, he was awarded an honorary doctorate. He is the recipient of the prestigious Batterymarch Fellowship in 1987 and numerous awards for his research publications. Before joining the Tuck faculty in 1998, Eckbo was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia (1981–1996) and at the Stockholm School of Economics (1996–98). In 2022, Woxsen University (Hyderabad, India) honored Eckbo by establishing the Bjorn Espen Eckbo Professorship in Corporate Finance. Based on citations and research impact, the data-analytics service ScholarGPS recently ranked Professor Eckbo among the top 15 researchers in the world contributing to the broad area of Corporate Finance.

Chaired by

Dr. Salla Pöyry

Professor of Practice in Finance, Aalto School of Business

Salla Pöyry is a Professor of Practice at Aalto University’s business school. Her research is in empirical finance covering topics in asset pricing and topics related to market frictions and imperfections. She has co-authored a book on governance and board practices of large Nordic companies and served on several stock listed and privately held companies. She is also chair and active in operating a family investment company.