Erkki Liikanen has spent over five decades navigating the complexities of European and global finance, often at the intersection of economic policy, political negotiation, and institutional reform. He was elected to the Finnish Parliament at just 21, making him the youngest MP in the country’s history at the time.
Today, Erkki Liikanen serves as Chair of the IFRS Foundation Trustees, where he oversees the development of international standards for financial and sustainability reporting. Under his leadership, the IFRS underwent its most transformative evolution to date. Its launch of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), announced at COP26, brings financial and non-financial reporting under a more unified global framework. This decisive shift moved climate and sustainability issues from the periphery to the core of corporate disclosure.
Prior to his role at IFRS, Liikanen was Governor of the Bank of Finland for 14 years where he sat on the European Central Bank’s Governing Council through the global financial crisis and eurozone debt turmoil. He was also a governor at the International Monetary Fund. In 2012, Erkki Liikanen chaired the European Commission’s expert group on structural reform in the banking sector. As a two-term European Commissioner from 1995 to 2004, Liikanen has held portfolios for Budget and later Enterprise and the Information Society.
He helped steer EU policy during the internet’s regulatory infancy and recalls how both IFRS standards and the internet posed similar governance challenges. Global, technical innovations led by the private sector, yet demanding coherent public oversight. His instinct was never to create “an EU version” of either, but to embrace internationalism, an approach that helped shape Europe’s adoption of IFRS.
Erkki Liikanen champions voices from emerging economies and underscores the need for geographic and intellectual diversity in global standard-setting. He is particularly attuned to Asia’s growing economic weight and its role in shaping IFRS evolution. Liikanen is Chair of the Board at Bruegel, one of Europe’s leading economic think tanks, and also chairs the Board of the Helsinki Graduate School of Economics.
