Top Nordic credit analyst Ole Einar Stokstad to join Norselab from DNB Markets

Earlier this year, Norselab announced its ambition to build a leading European impact investment platform. The impact investor made a first move to expand across asset classes when partnering with top-performing Nordic portfolio manager Tom Hestnes last month. The initiative is taking shape with a renowned team as Norway’s leading credit analyst Ole Einar Stokstad joins from DNB.

Leveraging the impact potential for credit funds

Ole Einar Stokstad has been leading DNB Market’s high-performing credit research team for the past 15 years. He is now teaming up with Norselab to build a series of impact-focused credit funds with Tom Hestnes. Stokstad is known as one of Norway’s top credit analysts and complements Hestnes’ portfolio management experience. Together, they will form the core team of the new impact initiative.

- I am all pumped up about joining Norselab’s credit initiative alongside Tom Hestnes and the Norselab team. Meeting them and learning about Norselab’s impact angle, governance rig, and culture was decisive for me. Contributing to our future has never been as crucial as today. I'm sure we can make a positive difference with Norselab's forward-leaning and dynamic approach, where impact is at the front and center of everything, Stokstad shares. Stokstad believes that an impact-focused AIF (“Alternative Investment Fund”) structure will be attractive for long-term professional and institutional investors. AIF structures are typically well-suited for investors seeking to avoid short-term fluctuations in the stock markets and changing interest rates in the property market.

According to Stokstad, institutional investors, real estate investors, and the likes will show increasing interest in the asset class, particularly if it can showcase a solid impact lens.

Meaningfulness across asset classes

Impact, or “meaningfulness” as it goes by in Norselab’s proprietary terms, is the common denominator for all of the impact investor’s fund initiatives across all asset classes.

- The new initiative will be a first-of-its-kind impact-focused credit fund. There are very few, if any, comparable funds in the Nordics today, and with the long-term market trends we are observing, we have every reason to believe that this will be a unique and very attractive product. With Stokstad joining the initiative alongside Hestnes, we now have a solid team in place to ensure we can deliver a meaningful market-leading investment product to the local and international marketplace, affirms Norselab CEO, Erik Syvertsen.

Building a European impact investment platform

Over the past two years, Norselab has significantly ramped up its structure and ambitions. The start of a strategic partnership with Capricorn Investment Group earlier this year was an essential step towards its goal to build a leading European impact investment platform. As Norselab’s first two funds are venture funds, the credit initiative with Hestnes and Stokstad is the impact investor’s first move to diversify in terms of asset class and investment stage.

- We are humbled and proud to welcome two top credit professionals in the Nordics to our new initiative. They are the best-placed duo to help achieve our shared ambition; to prove that impact is the future, no matter the asset class, affirms Syvertsen.

Norselab’s larger team will back Hestnes and Stokstad in getting the project off the ground. Unlike most investment managers, Norselab has a vast team with deep competence in strategic areas such as governance, impact, and communications. The team’s role is to enable and empower all initiatives in the Norselab ecosystem.

Norselab plans to reveal further details about the initiative in early August.

About Ole Einar Stokstad

Ole Einar Stokstad has recently announced that he would join Norselab's new impact-focused credit initiative alongside top-performing portfolio manager in the Nordics, Tom Hestnes. Stokstad led DNB Markets' credit analysis team for the past fifteen years, which has consistently ranked as top two high-yield credit analysis providers in the Nordics for many years. He worked in the DNB group for twenty years. Stokstad holds a Master of Science in Economics from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences from 2001.