Inside the CFO Office: Tommi Valento, Elenia

In our Inside the CFO Office series, we continue exploring the journeys of financial leaders who bring unique perspectives to their roles.

This time, we meet Tommi Valento, CFO of Elenia, a long-standing Ropo client since 2018. His career journey through consulting, finance, and law to leading one of Finland’s major energy companies offers valuable lessons about resilience, continuous learning, and the strategic value of keeping doors open.

“I’ve always tried to make decisions that open more possibilities than they close,” Tommi reflects. “Early in your career, it’s easy to make choices that lock you into a very specific role. I wanted to maintain flexibility for different types of work.”

That philosophy has taken him from management consulting at McKinsey into banking at OP Group and Kaupthing Bank, through KPMG’s debt advisory practice, and eventually to leading finance at one of Finland’s largest electricity distribution companies.

Along the way, he added law and CFA qualifications to his economics degree – not because of a grand plan, but because curiosity kept pulling him forward.

Turning turbulence into opportunity

The 2008-2009 financial crisis became an unexpected turning point in Tommi’s career. Working at Kaupthing Bank as the crisis unfolded, he witnessed firsthand what happens when market turbulence reaches its peak. When the bank’s Helsinki office closed in early 2009, Tommi found himself with an opportunity he hadn’t planned for – time to accelerate his studies.

He’d enrolled in law school at Helsinki University in spring 2008, intending to study part-time alongside work.

“The market was clearly slowing down by early 2008. The financial crisis was already coming – it just showed up in banking much earlier than in the broader Finnish business community,” he recalls.

With the flexibility to focus fully on his studies, Tommi completed his Master of Laws in under two years – graduating as Bachelor of Laws in February 2010 and Master of Laws by May 2010. “It was quite intense, but the timing worked out.”

The experience fundamentally shaped his perspective on risk management. “In normal business situations, when you’re thinking about risks and drafting contracts, it’s easy to think ‘these scenarios will never actually happen.’ But they can. That’s exactly why you prepare for them.”

This encounter with large-scale market disruption gave Tommi a perspective that many finance leaders only understand theoretically: the importance of actually preparing for worst-case scenarios, not just documenting them.

“It’s exactly like with an insurance,” he explains. “Most of us have home insurance even though the probability of our house burning down is extremely small. Risk management in business works the same way, you plan ahead even for unlikely events.”

The crisis also reinforced another lesson, which is that economic cycles are inevitable. “You can be absolutely certain that if we’re in a growth period now, a downturn will come eventually. You have to plan beyond the cycles and think longer-term.”

Multiple perspectives build broader understanding

After law school, Tommi joined KPMG’s debt advisory practice, where he helped clients with financing arrangements and renegotiations. “It was an interesting combination – bringing together consulting lessons with what you know from the banking world,” he notes.

This breadth of experience proved valuable in unexpected ways. “I’ve looked at financing and business from a consultant’s perspective, a financier’s perspective, and now from company management’s perspective,” he explains. “That makes it easier to identify different viewpoints and find win-win solutions.”

A stint at Pohjolan Voima introduced him to the energy sector. “I’d done quite a few assignments for energy companies during my consulting career, and it was a sector where I saw significant investments happening, things evolving and changing.”

When Elenia offered the CFO role in 2015, the timing felt right. Nearly ten years later, he’s leading finance through one of the most significant transformations in Finnish energy history.

Tommi Valento

Born: 1976
Current position: CFO of Elenia Oy
Education: MSc (Economics), LLM (Law), CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst)
CFO Experience: Since 2015
Previous experience: Pohjolan Voima, KPMG, Kaupthing Bank, OP Group, McKinsey & Company

Energy infrastructure for generations

At Elenia, Tommi’s diverse background has proven particularly valuable. The company manages over 77,000 kilometers of electricity distribution network serving customers across Finland in more than 100 municipalities – infrastructure with 50-60 year lifespans that requires thinking in decades, not quarters.

“This is an extremely capital-intensive business,” Tommi explains. “What we invest today or in five years significantly impacts returns over the entire asset lifetime. We’re not just building for now – we’re building the electricity system that will serve Finnish society for decades to come.”

This long-term perspective creates unique challenges. Between 2024 and 2036, Elenia is investing €1.9 billion to replace aging overhead lines with underground cables, dramatically improving reliability during storms and heavy snow loads. Simultaneously, the green transition is creating entirely new infrastructure demands with Elenia’s investment needs exceeding €500 million for the same period.

“The interesting challenge is combining this long-term planning with very rapid changes,” Tommi notes. “A datacenter can be built in about a year, but if it requires us to build high-voltage distribution infrastructure, we’re talking about multi-year projects. We need to anticipate what’s coming.”

This tension between patient infrastructure development and accelerating market demands shapes much of Tommi’s work.

“We’ve seen this situation in other European countries already. Finland’s electricity distribution network has been well maintained, but we’re now reaching the point where bottlenecks are emerging and investment needs are larger than ever.”

Leading through support and extensive expertise

Tommi leads a 17-person organization divided into four teams: finance and reporting, treasury, legal and risk management, and sustainability. His leadership approach draws from that diverse background – particularly his coaching training.

“I try to create an environment where my team can perform at their best,” he explains. “My aim is to support and coach with them rather than tell them what to do, because they’re the best experts in their areas.”

But he’s also learned that effective leadership requires adapting to context. “You can’t lead everyone the same way. Someone with long experience who knows their job inside out can be given broad direction and trusted to execute. Someone new in a role needs more support and coaching. Some people want validation for their ideas, while others just want to agree on the goal and then run toward it at full speed.”

The sustainability imperative

In recent years, sustainability has grown into a central part of Tommi’s role – evolving naturally alongside the broader responsibilities of the finance function. Today, he is pursuing international strategy and sustainability studies at Hanken to deepen his understanding of the topic.

In October 2025 Elenia issued as the first electricity distribution company in the Nordics €500 million EU Green Bond, placing sustainability high on the agenda in discussions with global investors.

“Investor questions about sustainability themes are now central,” Tommi notes. “The clarity with which we can present Elenia’s story and help investors understand our business and risk profile directly affects credit spreads. Given that we have over €2 billion of interest-bearing debt with long tenors, we’re talking about impact of several millions of euros over the lifetime of a bond even with small improvements.”

Sustainability also shapes employer brand and talent attraction – a trend Tommi sees across all employee groups. And it’s a major reason he finds his work meaningful.

“I can’t think of many industries more central to the green transition than electricity distribution. If you want to do work with purpose that genuinely moves society toward a better tomorrow, this is right at the core.”

Practical wisdom

When asked what he’d tell his younger self or someone building a CFO career, Tommi returns to that theme of breadth over narrow specialization.

“What’s really worked for me is a multidisciplinary approach,” he emphasizes. “Rather than heading down one specific track toward a CFO position, especially early in your career, try different types of roles. It gives you tremendous perspective and helps you understand how the various stakeholder groups you’ll work with think.”

It’s advice born from experience – from someone whose career took unexpected turns and found that those experiences led exactly where he needed to go. “Building a multidisciplinary skill set, particularly early in your career, provides an excellent foundation and a broader spectrum of understanding.”

As energy systems transform and finance becomes increasingly intertwined with sustainability, technology, and long-term infrastructure planning, that broad perspective becomes ever more valuable. The CFOs who thrive won’t be those who followed the straightest path, but those who remained curious enough to keep learning along the way.

Elenia Oy is one of Finland’s leading electricity distribution companies, serving approximately 443,000 customers across Finland. The company operates over 77,000 kilometers of electricity network and is at the forefront of Finland’s green energy transition. Elenia is committed to building a sustainable electricity distribution system that serves Finnish society for decades to come, investing significantly in grid modernization and renewable energy integration.

Elenia has been a Ropo client since 2018.

Ropo is the Nordic market leader and pioneer in invoicing technology, transforming the invoicing flow end-to-end. We help companies unify and streamline all invoicing processes to create a seamless workflow, providing full visibility, elevated customer experience, and improved control with a single overview. Committed to exceptional service and our one-platform strategy, we proudly support over 11,000 clients across Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

This article is part of Ropo’s CFO Insights and Trends series, featuring expert perspectives, key trends, inspiring financial leaders, and more.

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