Since Norges Bank Investment Management was founded ten years ago to manage Norway’s prodigious oil wealth, Yngve Slyngstad has toiled in the shadow of the firm’s executive director, Knut Kjaer. No longer. On January 1, Slyngstad succeeded Kjaer as head of the 2 trillion kroner ($360 billion) fund, the second-biggest pension fund in the world after Japan’s $936 billion Government Pension Investment Fund. NBIM is expected to grow by 50 percent by 2010. Slyngstad’s mandate is to hike equities to 60 percent, from 40 percent, while the country’s central bank has proposed that NBIM make direct real estate and infrastructure investments for the first time. Slyngstad, 46, brings stock market smarts — he had been head of equity investments — and plenty of brainpower to his new position: He holds a law degree from the University of Oslo, a master’s in business administration from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, a master’s in economics from the University of California and a master’s in political science from Paris University.
