Windsor Training Virtual Series

Atilla Arda is a Senior Financial Sector Expert in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Monetary and Capital Markets Department; prior to this, he was a Senior Counsel in the IMF’s Financial & Fiscal Law Unit. Mr. Arda joined the IMF in February 2007 from the central bank of the Netherlands where he held a Senior Counsel position and was Substitute Secretary to the Board; he also contributed to the workings of the Legal Committee of the European System of Central Banks. Mr. Arda has consulted for over 70 countries, half of which on-site, including for the central banks of countries as diverse as Myanmar, Indonesia, Jamaica, Ukraine, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Kosovo, and Egypt. In recent years, he was the deputy mission chief for the IMF Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) for Switzerland and he led the crisis management workstream for the Euro Area FSAP; currently, he is leading the crisis management workstream for the USA FSAP. Mr. Arda is specialized in central bank governance and law, financial law, institutional frameworks for macroprudential policy and crisis management, financial safety net arrangements, crisis preparedness, and bank resolution regimes. Mr. Arda is a contributor for ‘Smit & Herzog on The Law of the European Union.’ He is a regular speaker at international conferences and has been chairing Central Banking Publications’ course on ‘Central Bank Governance and Legal Risks’ since 2014.

Janet Cosier is the former Chief Risk Officer and Adviser on Strategic Planning at the Bank of Canada. She continues in her capacity as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Payments Association. She has served in a variety of functions including comptroller and chief accountant, as well as chief internal auditor, before being appointed adviser to the governor. She has provided technical assistance to various central banks in the areas of strategic planning, risk management, governance and financial reporting. Before joining the Bank of Canada, she worked with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and with the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Mrs Cosier holds degrees from York University and the University of Windsor in mathematics, computer science, accounting and financial management.

Antti Heinonen has been the chairman of Banknote Ethics Initiative since its inception in 2013. He was the chairman of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group between 2008 and 2012 and the Director, Banknotes at the ECB from 1998 until 2008. He chaired the Banknote Committee of the European System of Central Banks for more than 10 years and the Eurosystem Cash Changeover Co-ordination Committee in 2001 and 2002. Prior to joining the ECB he was the chief cashier for the Bank of Finland. He holds degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Helsinki, and has recently written two books, one on the history of Finland’s markka banknotes, and another on euro banknotes. The latter is also translated in English (The First Euros) and German (Die Ersten Euros).

John Jussup was general counsel and secretary of the Bank of Canada, from 2009 until July 2012. Prior to joining the central bank, he was senior vice-president, chief legal officer & secretary of Cognos Inc., one of Canada’s leading software companies, from 1993 until its acquisition by IBM in 2008. Before joining Cognos, Mr Jussup held increasingly senior in-house counsel and secretarial positions in the mining, medical diagnostics and finance industries. He graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada and from Queen’s University, in Kingston, Canada (LLB). He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1979. He was a recipient of the Canadian General Counsel of the Year Award in 2005 in recognition of his achievements corporate governance. He currently sits on a number of boards and consults in the areas of in corporate secretarial and in-house legal practice.

María J. Nieto is Advisor in the Directorate of Financial Stability, Regulation and Resolution, at Bank of Spain where she has developed her career since December 2000. She is author of several articles on banking, financial stability and regulatory issues that have been published by prestigious peered reviewed journals and she is member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Banking Regulation and the Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance. She has cooperated as consultant with the IMF and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and has worked at the ECB, Council of Economic Advisors to the Spanish President and the IMF. Ms Nieto earned a PhD cum laude from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and MBA (finance) from the University of California Los Angeles.

Kimmo Soamäki is the founder and CEO of Financial Network Analytics (FNA) and the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Network Theory in Finance. He started his career as an economist at the Bank of Finland where he developed in 1997 the first simulation model for interbank payment systems. In 2004 while at the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr Soramäki was among the first to apply methods from network theory to improve our understanding of financial systems. During the financial crisis of 2007-2008 he advised several central banks, including the Bank of England and European Central Bank, in modelling interconnections and systemic risk. This work led him to found FNA in 2013 provide solutions to monitor the complex financial networks that play a continually larger role in the world around us. Mr Soramäki holds a Doctor of Science in Operations Research and a Master of Science in Economics (Finance), both from Aalto University in Helsinki.