Helena Viita
Helena Viita is a Helsinki-based Partner in the firm’s Finance & Restructuring and Emerging Companies practices. She has extensive experience of a wide variety of finance and debt capital markets work, including real estate and acquisition finance, securitisation transactions and financial restructurings. Helena also advises on financial regulatory, netting and derivatives.
She has also gained experience through secondments to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London and Sampo Bank plc in Helsinki.
Helena is recognized as one of the leading experts in Finland within Banking & Finance by international directories such as Chambers Global, Chambers Europe, IFLR1000 and the Legal 500.
Clients praise Helena for being “very knowledgeable” (Chambers Global, 2022) and her approach to “customer service, responsiveness, and ability to focus on the issues which are most important to the client” (Chambers Europe, 2018). She is lauded for being “pragmatic” (Chambers Europe, 2020), “very available and responsive” as well as “technically excellent” (Chambers Europe, 2017) and clients highlight her “solid understanding of the law and good commercial awareness” (Chambers Europe, 2016). Further, according to clients Helena is “always responsive, quick, and practical in her advice” (Chambers Global, 2014) and “tries to do everything she can to find the best solutions for her client” (Chambers Global, 2015).
Helena Viita’s experience includes advising:
- Tornator Oyj in its green refinancing which was carried out in three main separate phases. In the first phase a EUR 250m bridge loan was arranged to refinance the EUR 250m secured bond at its maturity in December 2019. The second phase consisted of the EUR 350m refinancing of secured term and revolving facilities closed in March 2020 in which connection the previous security arrangements were replaced with the new joint security pool shared among the separate financing arrangements and further with second priority securing certain hedging liabilities. Tornator’s commercial paper programme was also renewed to EUR 300 million in March 2020 and enable issuance of green commercial paper. The third phase completed the refinancing by the issuance of the secured green bond for an aggregate amount of EUR 350 million with a maturity of six years and a coupon of 1.250%. The green bond was listed on the list of sustainable bonds of Nasdaq Helsinki as the first listed green corporate bond in the Finnish debt capital markets;
- Joint lead managers Danske Bank, Nordea Bank and Swedbank in the offerings by The Employment Fund of EUR 600 m senior unsecured bonds due 2027 and EUR 600 m senior unsecured bonds due 2023 that were listed on the official list of Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd; and
- Caruna Group in the whole business securitisation style refinancing arrangement including secured lending from a banking group and from an orphan issuer which issues loans and bonds to investors inter alia under its EUR 10 billion bond programme. The total amount of Caruna Network Oy’s financing was EUR 1.93 billion.
Roschier (2002-), Partner since 2013
Sampo Bank Plc (currently Danske Bank Plc) /Helsinki, Visiting lawyer (2009-2010)
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer /London, Visiting lawyer (2007)
Member of the Finnish Bar Association
University of Helsinki, LL.M. (2002)
English, Finnish, Swedish
Solid understanding of the law and good commercial awareness.
Chambers Europe