By Pirkko Juntunen
In the past decade, the Norwegian hedge fund market has suffered from less than friendly legislation, which has left it trailing behind its other Nordic neighbours. Summing up what market participants and hedge fund professionals are saying, one word seems to suffice: difficult. Difficult, it seems, can be applied to both selling hedge funds in Norway and to trying to size up the market and prevailing trends.
Ola Wessel-Aas and Ivar Waage
The main reasons for this so called “difficulty” are legislation and tax regulations that have hampered the growth of a Norwegian hedge fund market and led to domestic managers setting up overseas in jurisdictions such as Dublin or Luxembourg.
It seems like a brutal irony given the amount of assets available for investment in the country’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which now tops $516 billion. Not to mention the country’s oil wealth, shipping...