During the holiday season we were reached by the sad news that Professor Claes Göran Alvstam passed away on the 27 December.

From January 2022, Jessica O’Mary has been appointed Vice President of External Relations at SSE. The previous Vice President, Katarina Hägg, has been appointed the new CEO of SSE Executive Education and is moving on to that position.

Katarina Hägg has been appointed CEO of SSE Executive Education. From January she is taking over from Anders Richtnér, who is moving on to new challenges outside of SSE. Katarina will be moving on from her current position as Vice President of International Affairs and External Relations at SSE.

The need for urgent climate action and energy transformation away from fossil fuels is widely acknowledged. Yet, current country plans for emission reductions do not reach the requirements to contain global warming under 2°C. What is worse, there is even reasonable doubt about the commitment to said plans given recent history and existing future investment plans into fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure development. This policy brief shortly summarizes the presentations and discussions at the SITE Development Day Conference, held on December 8, 2021, focusing on climate change policies and the challenge of a green energy transition in Eastern Europe.

COVID-19 has brought economic shocks of unprecedented scale and impact. The global value chain is not an exception. What policies and investments are needed to improve global value chains post pandemic? On December 20, 2021, Erik Berglöf, Chief Economist at Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, presented key findings from the Asian Infrastructure Finance 2021 report: Sustaining Global Value Chains.

Following the latest regulations issued by the Swedish Authorities, we are adapting our operations starting from December 23, 2021, and through January 31, 2022. ​The government is strongly emphasizing that higher education activities should continue to be live on campus.

The past few weeks has been busy for SSE alum Magdalena Andersson, since she became the first female Prime Minister of Sweden in November. Last week, the Student Association at SSE (SASSE) organized a Christmas style event in the Atrium to honor her.

Policy brief: Some recently discovered money laundering schemes have funnelled large amounts of illegal money from former soviet states through European banks. This note briefly describes the evolution of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regime for financial institutions, the introduction of which was concurrent with the post-soviet transition and the connected illegal flows of funds. It discusses the effectiveness of the current AML regime – and its ability to detect and seize illegal funds. The brief also highlights some of its deficiencies as well as lack of compliance with its prescriptions. It proceeds to stress that after judging the current framework insufficient, the US recently introduced whistleblower rewards for AML-infringements. Europe might want to follow their lead if it really aims at limiting money laundering.

This autumn, the City Planning Committee of Stockholm decided that the stairs between Saltmätargatan and Holländargatan will be named after Gisèle Asplund, who was the first female Doctor of Philosophy at SSE. The naming ceremony took place this afternoon.