Norway has a thriving community of expatriates living in Singapore, and now the community looks set to get bigger after the head of Norway’s so-called Oil Fund formally opened a new office there last week.
Oil Fund boss Yngve Slyngstad was joined by Finance Minister Sigbjørn Johnsen when they opened the office in the heart of Singapore’s financial district. Formally called Statens pensjonsfond utland, the Oil Fund ranks as one of the world’s largest funds.
The Singapore office is the fund’s fourth, after Oslo, London, New York and Shanghai. “Asia will become steadily more important for us,” Slyngstad, who leads around 250 employees who manage the fund’s assets, told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN). The Singapore office will be headed by Sigmund Kyrdalen, who was Slyngstad’s successor as head of the fund’s London office when Slyngstad headed back to the Norwegian central bank’s headquarters, where the fund is based.
He’s not the only one thinking Asia will keep getting more important. Finnish airline Finnair opened a new route to Singapore last week as well, in addition to its routes from Oslo to Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Delhi. It now boasts that it’s the “fast” airline between Norway and Asia, another reflection of rapidly increasing links. Finnair recently announced a 28 percent increase in traffic to Asia.
Views and News staff