In a message to his employees, outgoing Norwegian Oil Fund manager Yngve Slyngstad has lamented his poor judgment as he flew home from a disputed US seminar in November 2019 on board a luxurious private jet hired by his future successor Nicolai Tangen.
“I really screwed up”, Yngve Slyngstad wrote in an internal memo on the intranet of Norges Bank, the company's central bank that manages the $1 trillion Oil Fund. Slyngstad called it a “lack of good judgment and a classic example of how not to be professional”, national broadcaster NRK reported.
Slyngstad admitted that travelling on a chartered private jet went against the “modest” guidelines that employees must strictly adhere to.
“I'm really, really sorry”, Slyngstad wrote to his colleagues, berating himself for having “failed the organisational culture and weakened the reputation” of the fund.
“This is like mountain climbing", Slyngstad wrote. “It is while climbing down, when you are tired and think that you have made it, that you fall”.
Norges Bank Communications Manager Marthe Skaar said the message was “well received” by its employees.
“This is the first time Yngve Slyngstad as head of the Oil Fund has not travelled by scheduled aeroplane covered by Norges Bank, and he himself says this was unfortunate”, Norges Bank wrote in the press release.
The confession concerns a seminar arranged by billionaire Nicolai Tangen held in Philadelphia five months before he applied for the job as the new head of Norway's Oil Fund (and got it). The seminar hosted about 150 guests and involved luxurious jets, lectures, and a private concert with Sting.
According to the accounts presented by Tangen, each guest who flew used the private plane to and from Oslo and received accommodation for three nights and all meals covered by Tangen, cost an average of NOK 160,000 each ($15,000), NRK reported. Renting the private jet alone cost close to NOK 5.3 million ($500,000).
Slyngstad has managed the Oil Fund since 2008. His successor, 53-year-old founder of $16 billion AKO Capital LLP Nicolai Tangen, is himself facing serious scrutiny over the seminar, which a number of other Norwegian public figures attended. The central bank’s watchdog is now reviewing several aspects of Tangen’s recruitment process, including the fact that he never appeared on a public list of candidates.
According to the Oil Fund and Norway's central bank, the seminar had nothing to do with getting Tangen hired, nor was Slyngstad personally involved in picking his successor.
The Government Pension Fund of Norway, commonly referred to as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. At over $1 trillion in assets, including 1.4% of global stocks and shares, it is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.