The long-standing head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is to strengthen expertise in sustainability issues at Deutsche Bank.
(Photo: REUTERS)
Frankfurt The former head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, Yngve Slyngstad, is to move into the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank. On Friday, the control committee recommended that its shareholders vote for the 59-year-old at the Annual General Meeting on May 19, 2022.
Slyngstad is to succeed Gerhard Eschelbeck. The five-year term of office of the former head of security at Google ends with this year’s shareholders’ meeting, Eschelbeck is not running again.
The Norwegian, who studied economics, law, politics and philosophy in Oslo and Paris and at the University of California, managed Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund in Norway, for 13 years. Prior to that, he had been head of the equities division since the fund’s inception in 1998. The state fund manages the Norwegian oil assets.
Since the beginning of March, he has headed the newly created wealth management division of investment company Aker, which focuses primarily on investments related to the energy transition required in view of climate change. With the nomination of Slyngstad, Deutsche Bank should therefore also want to strengthen its expertise in sustainability issues. The bank sees an important strategic business opportunity in the climate-neutral restructuring of the economy and has declared the topic a “central part of the corporate strategy”.
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Because Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, for which Slyngstad had worked since it was founded, took ethical and ecological aspects into account in its investment policy very early on. The fund parted ways with palm oil producers who cut down the rainforest many years ago. The same applies to companies in the coal sector. That also hit the German energy giant RWE two years ago.
With the nomination of the former head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, Deutsche Bank has announced the second important change in its supervisory board in a short space of time.
(Photo: dpa)
However, Slyngstad also stands for a pragmatic approach to the implementation of sustainability criteria. The sovereign wealth fund has parted with many stocks over time for ethical and ecological reasons. In a 2018 interview with the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”, Slyngstad also said: “However, I believe that boycotts are often not the right remedy. We have to enter into a dialogue with the companies in order to influence them.”
>> Read more here about Stephen Yngve Slyngstad – Lord of the Oil Piggy Bank
Slyngstad’s career has not remained completely free of turbulence: two years ago he was criticized for a flight to Norway. He had been invited by a hedge fund manager to fly in a private jet.
Many saw this as a violation of the sovereign wealth fund’s compliance rules – even though the Norwegian central bank, which is responsible for its administration, later declared that there was no violation of ethical guidelines, even if Slyngstad should have refrained from the flight.
The faux pas also made waves in Norway because the hedge fund manager was Nicolai Tangen, his designated successor at the time at the head of the sovereign wealth fund. In a memo to his staff, Slyngstad apologized for his mistake and spoke of a “lack of common sense”.
In addition to the sustainability expertise, Slyngstad, as a long-standing major investor, should also have a lot of experience in the field of asset management. The experienced investor is widely networked in the financial sector and also knows Paul Achleitner, who has been the head of the Supervisory Board for many years at Deutsche Bank. However, the chairperson of the nominating committee, Mayree Clark, was responsible for the selection process.
“We will benefit from his network in the financial sector worldwide as well as from his extensive experience as one of the pioneers of sustainable investments and from his focus on current climate and energy policy issues,” said Clark in the bank’s statement.
The nomination of Slyngstad is the second important personnel change that Deutsche Bank has planned for this year’s shareholder meeting:
More: Dutchman Alexander Wynaendts is to become the head of the supervisory board at Deutsche Bank