Few institutional investors feature in their own documentary series and the work of most sovereign wealth funds takes place in carefully controlled secrecy. But some Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) staff have enjoyed the limelight in a TV documentary this year, which follows a boost in applications for summer internships and graduate traineeships.
NBIM has this week also highlighted in a social media post the promotion of Haakon Husøy – an employee who featured prominently in the documentary ‘Oljefondet – på innsiden’ (The Oil Fund – On the Inside), which aired on Norway’s state broadcaster NRK in April.
Ciffhanger
NBIM, which runs the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), confirmed in a post on LinkedIn that Husøy will now run a portfolio in the organisation’s energy and infrastructure department.
NBIM said many people had asked, following the TV series, whether Husøy had in fact achieved his stated ambition to become a portfolio manager, describing the uncertainty over the desired promotion as a “cliffhanger” in the TV show.
“Today, the answer is ‘yes’!” NBIM said.
NBIM, which runs the NOK20trn (€1.8trn) fund belonging to Norway’s 5.6m population, said in its 2024 annual report that it attached importance “to being transparent, communicating with the fund’s owners and maintaining a dialogue with the companies we invest in”.
Last year, the SWF was judged to be the world’s most transparent investment fund, according to the Global Pension Transparency Benchmark (GPTB) for a second year.
In the TV series, Husøy is portrayed in frequent close-ups as an emotionally intelligent professional concerned with family issues while also feeling burdened at times by the responsibility of managing large public investments.
NBIM emphasised Husøy’s diverse interests before coming to the investment manager in 2021, in last week’s LinkedIn post.
“His road here has been anything but ordinary. From aspiring jazz pianist, to geopolitics, Russian studies and officer training in the Norwegian Armed Forces, to Columbia University, and eventually the graduate programme in the fund,” NBIM said.
“Haakon’s story also exemplifies the kind of talent we deliberately seek,” it said.
This September, NBIM hired seven people for the graduate programme it runs for final-year students and recent graduates, which is open to applicants who have already done its summer internship programme or a student engagement assignment.
The organisation reported a big increase in the number of applicants for its summer internship programme last year, to 4,347 from 2,503 in 2023, while applicants for its graduate programme rose to 1,142 from 1,006.
Employment tribunal
In 2023, aspects of NBIM as an employer and workplace were laid bare in an Oslo court as the central bank arm was sued by Elisabeth Bull Daae, head of trading analytics, for a range of complaints about her treatment as an employee.
NBIM won the case, in which she had claimed she had been underpaid compared to men for 10 years, but the judgment did contain some criticism of the central bank arm.
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