If you take a longer term, you make fewer decisions. The fewer decisions you make, the better that tend to be. And if you make one decision a month, it tends to be better if you make 10 a day. MUSIC Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to another session of Goldman Sachs Talks. And I'm delighted to be joined today by the CEO of Nordges Bank Investment Management, Nikolai Tangen. So first of all, let's welcome Nikolai to Goldman Sachs. APPLAUSE So Nikolai is responsible for the management of the government pension fund. It's the world's largest self-enwar fund, owning about 1.4% of the world's listed companies. Nikolai also runs the daily operations of Nordges Bank Investment Management. He was previously the chief executive officer and chief investment officer of AKO Capital, one of Europe's top investment management firms. Nikolai founded AKO Capital and also established the AKO Foundation, which aims to support education, promote the arts, and combat climate change. We're obviously going to talk to Nikolai about Nordges Bank, how investments can drive change, leadership, and what he's learned from some of the top leaders in the world from your podcast. So I'm looking forward to talking about that. And so if it's OK, we're going to kind of jump right in. So, OK. Well, so you're coming up on your fifth year anniversary as a CEO of Nordges Bank Investment Management, Norway's $1.7 trillion investment fund. And the fund is up 60% since you took over in 2020. Talk about the responsibility of stewarding a pool of capital this large. Talk a little bit about how you kind of think about that responsibility and how it's kind of framed the way you've tried to set this up over the last five years. Yeah, it's a big responsibility because it's such a kind of big fund for a very small country. And despite, we only use 2.5% of the fund every year. It provides more than 20% of the state budget.
如果采取长期策略,你会减少决策次数。决策越少,往往质量越高。如果每月只做一个决策,通常比每天做十个决策要好。 音乐 下午好,欢迎大家参加另一场高盛谈话活动。我很高兴今天能够与北欧银行投资管理公司的首席执行官尼古拉·唐恩一同出席。首先,让我们欢迎尼古拉来到高盛。掌声!尼古拉负责管理政府养老基金,该基金是全球最大的主权财富基金,持有全球约1.4%的上市公司股份。尼古拉也负责北欧银行投资管理公司的日常运作。他曾是欧洲顶级投资管理公司之一 AKO Capital 的首席执行官兼首席投资官。尼古拉创立了 AKO Capital,并设立了 AKO 基金会,旨在支持教育、促进艺术和应对气候变化。我们显然会与尼古拉探讨北欧银行投资、投资如何推动变革、领导力,以及他从世界顶级领导者播客中学到的东西。我很期待谈论这些内容。那么如果可以的话,我们就直接开始吧。你即将迎来担任北欧银行投资管理公司首席执行官五周年的纪念日,即挪威1.7万亿美元投资基金的负责人。自2020年你接管以来,该基金增长了60%。谈一谈管理这么大一笔资金的责任感,谈一点你如何看待这种责任,以及你在过去五年中是如何设置这方面条件的。 是的,这是一项重大责任,因为对一个小国来说,这是一笔非常大的基金。尽管我们每年只使用基金的2.5%,但它提供了超过20%的国家预算。
And we have on our website a ticker, which is the live value of the fund, and is updated 13 times per second. So pretty kind of live. And it's the most wattage number in the country. So everybody is focusing in on it. So big responsibility. But it's made easier by the fact that we have a mandate, a really, really good mandate. Which is basically made by the Ministry of Finance. And it's brought politically anchored. So all the political parties agree with what we're doing. It means that they will not change their mind at the wrong time. And so that's good. And then also, of course, I don't do it on my own. We have 700 people, a really, really great team. And then, yes, there are a lot of zeros in 19,000 billion Norwegian corona. But you don't really think about those numbers. You think about doing the right thing, doing the right processes. And then the numbers will follow. Yeah. I know that some of the guiding principles are to be long-term oriented and diversified.
But talk a little bit about how you decide where to invest. And how do you decide where not to invest? So again, the Ministry has this mandate. But at the same time, we have to do it in an ethical way. So we have a separate council of ethics, which decides where we cannot invest. We don't invest in coal, weapons, and so on. And there are some countries where we don't invest. And so that's the broad picture. We are very diversified. We own some 9,000 companies across the whole world. In Europe, we own a bit more, close to 2 and 1,000 to 3%. Across Europe.
Yeah. So I know that one of the things that you've said repeatedly, is you really aim to be the most transparent investment fund in the world. Talk a little bit about the benefits of transparency when you're running an investment pool like this. And how you think about transparency as a principal. Yeah, to me, transparency is like totally key. Transparency increases trust. If the more your clients can see, the more they trust you. We disclose every holding we have twice a year. And we are the most transparent fund in the world. There is actually a world championship in transparency. Is there? Yeah. And for a period of time. Didn't know that. That's the sport I'm doing. Now, for a while, the Canadians were number one. And I thought, hey, find that the Canadians beat us in ice hockey. But it's not fine that they beat us in transparency. Well, I don't know that it's really fine that they beat when ice hockey.
But so last year for the first time, we became the world champion. That's awesome. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about climate, because I know it's an area of focus for you. Talk a little bit about the private sector, the world the private sector should play, the world investors play when it comes to the environment and sustainability. Do you see, how do you think about the long-term investment opportunity around these long cycle transition issues? Well, so we care about climate because it is a financial risk. We see it now in a lot of the commodity prices. You see it in coffee, olive oil, orange juice, all these kind of things, where the prices are going up, because harvests are worse because of the climate.
So climate and the financial market is linked in a different way than it has been before. So we spend a lot of time working with our companies, making sure they do the right thing on climate. I appreciate there's been a backlash in the US. We haven't really seen that to the same extent in Europe. And for sure, in Norway, we continue to have the same opinions as we've had before. I think there are investment opportunities in that space as well now, which are better than before. We got the opportunity to invest in renewable infrastructure four years ago. And at the beginning, we were just really, really slow, because we thought the returns were too low, too many people chasing the deals. But now that's changed. So we think there are better returns in the space. There is a bit more supply, so you can deploy more capital. And we have beefed up the team and doing more than that. And renewable infrastructure specifically? Yeah. Or more broadly.
Talk a little. Five years in, kind of frame for me. What are a handful of key accomplishments in these first five years? And what are a handful of the most important learnings? Yeah. Yeah, so first of all, it's not me, right? It's about the big team. But what are we focusing on? What are we focusing on performance, of course, because without performance, we have no reason to be. And it's very much about learning from mistakes. We've created this investment simulator where all the data from every PM is up in the cloud. And when you want to make a decision, you get it all fed back to you. All your weaknesses, all your bad habits, are you normally selling loses too late? Are you selling winners too early? When you trade, you basically get all these signals fed back to you. And so that's been a big development, which is now starting to change investment behavior. It's really cool, very good. We're also working on getting people to be more contrarian in the trades they do, and more long-term. The most difficult thing is to be long-term. Why is it so difficult? Why? You come to work on a Monday, and it's just like you come home. And you tell your husband, and he asks you, what did you do today? Well, I did nothing. Tuesday, nothing. Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, nothing. You don't feel great about it. And so sometimes the best thing is not to do very much, but it's very profitable. Compounding is just amazing. Compounding is a powerful thing. It's unbelievable. That's what we're doing on investment side.
On the people side, more development of people, we are recruiting better people. On the communication side, much more transparency, more internal communication, more external communication. And then operational robustness better, and more focusing on cyber. So we just done a lot of things. Your shareholder, you mentioned 9,000 companies. I know Goldman Sachs is one of those companies. We appreciate that. We thank you for all your hard work. We're working hard. Adam, because you guys are working hard. We're working hard. We're working hard. Talk a little bit about investor dialogue. What makes for an effective investor dialogue? And how important is investor dialogue for you with respect to the companies? It's very, very important. We have more than 3,000 meetings a year with our companies. We turn up at nearly 10,000 AGMs. We vote on 120,000 proposals. We've got a big machinery doing this. I think the key is to have very clear expectations. And so we have this set up and set out in expectation documents. It's important to be consistent over time so that you, as a CEO, know that we are not like changing our mind all the time. One of the things I've found very interesting about our dialogue with you is, you know, I would say, you know, your team, when they deal with us, they are deep in the weeds, deep in the weeds. I'm really trying to understand how we're thinking about things.
Do you, how do you do that by industry sector? Do you do that? How do you do that in the context? Yeah, we have industry sectors. We've got some really strong sectors. I think our banking team is really superb. So that's how we do it. Now, you know, there are two ways you can deal with problems. As an owner, you can just, you can sell your holding, or you can go into a dialogue. Now, what kind of problem do you solve by selling your holding? Nothing. You know, let's say now you have a company which is doing, you know, not so good stuff on climate. You sell, everybody sells the holding, what happens? Well, the company ends up in the hands of people who don't care. You know, so it's just not good. It's better to hold it and to talk. And to advocate and to engage. It's a good way. It's a good way to have problems at home. You can just kind of sort off, or you can try to fix it. Let's try to fix it as a better strategy.
Awesome. Listen and understand first. Yeah. So in the first half of 2024, your fund post at $138 billion in profit, largely in kind of the acceleration of large cap tech. Let's talk a little bit about AI, kind of the future of AI investment. What are some of the risks of concentration in the market? I mean, at the moment, you know, when you look at kind of the large cap indexes and what's going on, you have enormous concentration. And if you're not, you know, overweighted to this handful of stocks, you're going to unperform. Talk a little bit about how you think it'll be. Yeah, it's a level of concentration we've never seen before, right? Mm-hmm. As you know, hugely concentrated in very few names. The big problem here, in my mind, is that they're all linked into the same geopolitical risk. And so we have not seen before, one, the concentration we've seen, two, the link with geopolitical risk.
And that's just very risky. And so I think the risk in the public market is probably higher than in the private market now. Yeah. Yeah. And in the past, you know, we looked at kind of risks, well. Public market, not risky. Private market, very risky. I think perhaps it's changed. So you raised the private market. I talk a little bit about kind of private market. Talk a little bit about the fact that, obviously, in public markets, we have a narrowing of listing companies. We also, I think, given the burden of operating as a public company, we have people waiting longer to take companies to the public market. There's more availability of capital in a private form. How do you think about the private markets? How do you think about the growth of private capital? What do you think we are, you know, more secular growth?
Well, I think it's very interesting. You know, you now have, supposedly, the number of listed companies in the US has gone from 8,000 to 4,000. You're seeing the same development in Europe. You're seeing it pretty much all over the place. Private market companies stay private for longer. They get bigger and so on. So, I mean, unfortunately, it's a space where we are not operating. Yeah. So it's not in our mandate to be in the private market. But there is a political process. So it may change, but no for now. You know, I think ideally one should be in both. 6% annual returns, that kind of steadiness, that reliability has earned enormous trust from the people of Norway. Some critics probably say you can perform at a higher rate. Yeah. How do you think about that? How do you, because there's no question, you know, the risk reward has to be balanced when you think about long-term returns. How do you kind of benchmark? How do you think about that? Yeah, again, coming back to this mandate that we have for the Ministry, which in broad terms, or, you know, lay out how we should be invested. We have roughly 70% in equities, 30% in bonds. We have a real estate portfolio where we got, like, 1,000 properties around the world. We got quite a lot of ownership on, you know, aero Manhattan as well.
So the returns could have been higher, historically, had we been in private markets, but, you know, we are not. You know, we have compounded between 6% and 7% for the last 28 years, and that's been good. So you look at the value of the fund now. One third of the fund is the value of money that the government has put in, and two thirds is returns. Yeah. So it's quite amazing. In a way, we found oil twice. One on Norwegian shelf. Yeah. Second time in financial markets. Yeah. When you think about kind of a risk award, you know, over a long period of time, and you think about compounding, you know, in particular, when you want a great asset, we own it forever, do you feel like if you really had an incredible asset that you say, we're going to own this for 50 years?
Personally, yes. That's the way I would construct a portfolio. Now, when you have portfolio managers who are incentivized on, let's say, three-year rolling basis, it's difficult to get people not to trade very much. And so we try to extend the time horizon on this. We are probably going to put in a five-year element in the comp, which I think you need to do to get people to kind of take a longer view. A longer to view, because you take a longer to view, you make fewer decisions. The fewer decisions you make, the better that tend to be. You know, if you make one decision a month, it tends to be better if you make 10 a day, right? Yeah, sure. You save, of course, I mean, of course, you would hate to hear this, but you save trading commission. And so.
I don't really hate to hear it because I think it's fundamentally right. You know, I love the fact, though, that there are so many incentive schemes that actually force people to create velocity around capital. But one of the things I've never really understood is when you think about the way the whole private capital market is structured, it's actually structured to create velocity of capital. And, you know, I think most pension funds, just to take a broad example, not specific to your own, but most pension funds, you know, have much, much longer data liabilities. And so, you know, why, if you're allocating your money to a private equity manager, just pick one, you know, one form of private capital, why would you rather that they own something for four or five years and have an incentive system create velocity around it instead of to try to find they're a great company that can compound 8 to 10 percent, OK, you want them to own it for 30 years or 40 years. But there's very little. The whole financial market incentive system's not set up to do that. Absolutely. But everything is moving faster, you know, there's more frequent trading. Sure.
You know, you'd be surprised to hear it, but over the last 30 years, people talk and walk 10 percent faster. So you measure average speed of walking in a city, and, you know, compared to 30 years ago, you were 10 percent faster. I mean, I think I've walked you, but. I've always been a fast walker. You've always been fast. I think I walked. I was just really, really interested. Just as fast now as I did 30 years ago. Yeah. I'm wondering about the companies you'd. I might talk a little bit slower now because, unfortunately, now people are listening to everything I say, so I've got to talk slower. But the walking things into people, people, there's certainly an intensity. Yeah. Especially around markets, there's an intensity that didn't exist 30, 40 years ago. Yeah, it's. It's markets. You know, we are always on, you know, about mobile phones. It's 24-7. It's 24-7. More or 18-2. Yeah. 24-7. For sure.
Let's shift gears. You launched this terrific podcast, In Good Company, in 2022, all about leadership. I was lucky. And the second guest was you? I was the second guest. I was just lucky to be a guest. Thank you. Thank you for making me the second guest. I didn't realize I was the second guest. Who was the first guest? It was the C-O-B-P. Oh. But when you came on, you know, it was really cool because, you know, you start this thing, it was a pilot. I didn't know whether he was a good fly or not. And bang, you get the C-O of Goldman Sachs. Wow, big deal, you know. So then we thought, hey, this could perhaps be a serious thing. Well, now it's the biggest. Now it's one of the leading. It's a biggest podcast in the world, you know, one of them. Yeah. And, yeah, it's fun. No, it's a big podcast. But, I mean, think about this, okay?
让我们转换一下话题。你在2022年推出了一档非常棒的播客《In Good Company》,它主要谈论领导力。我很幸运,而你竟然是第二位嘉宾?是的,我是第二位嘉宾。我只是很幸运能成为嘉宾。谢谢,谢谢你让我成为第二位嘉宾。我都不知道我是第二位嘉宾。谁是第一个嘉宾?是C-O-B-P。哦。不过当你参加的时候,你知道吗,那真的是很酷,因为这是一个试播集。我当时并不知道效果如何。没想到,你请到了高盛的CEO。哇,真是大手笔。所以我们就想,嘿,这或许能成为一个很重要的项目。现在它已经是世界上最大、最具影响力的播客之一了,是的,非常有趣。这是一个很大的播客。不过,想想看,好吗?
Have anybody listened to any of these? Have anybody listened to any of these? Has anybody heard the podcast? Yeah. The CEO. What's wrong with the rest of you? Start listening to the podcast. The CEO of the largest sovereign wealth fund and a significant shareholder in the world. A significant shareholder in Goldman Sachs calls and says, hey, will you go on my podcast? Let me think about it, okay? I mean, that was not a tough ask. I was really impressed because you responded within five minutes. OK. Well, I try to be very, very responsive.
But let's talk about the podcast. You've interviewed dozens of CEOs at this point, dozens of CEOs. Yeah. What similarities do you see? Yeah, it's very interesting because when you kind of cut them up into pieces and throw them up in the air and see where they land, CEOs have a lot of similarities, right? There is a lot of focus on grit. There is generally high level of energy. I would say curiosity is very high up on the list. So, yeah, they have quite a lot of things in common. Is good leadership changing and evolving? I think it is. I think it is. I think there is more focus in on listening skills. There is more on empathy.
There is more on generally involving the people you work with in strategy development and so on. I think it makes it easier to actually execute. And I also think the empathy element I think is more important than ever before in a time of AI that we lean on what it is that makes us human. And then I think there is a really interesting thing with the Indian leaders, people with Indian backgrounds because they've kind of broke through the glass ceiling and taken over the whole Silicon Valley, right? So, what is it that they bring? Well, I think there are more in the know in what they are doing.
There is something that the firm is bigger than themselves. There is a lot of focus on empathy, such as such an Adela who talks about that a lot. Very big on that. And that there is no trade-off between empathy and execution. It goes hand in hand. So, I think leadership is moving. Are there differences in regions? Yes. I suspect US leaders are a bit more extrovert. Probably take a bit more risks than we do in Europe. Skaven and Avin is big. I think that's a positive. Well, I actually think it's yes, it is a positive. And it explains part of why we have a bit of a problem in Europe. We don't take enough risks.
You know, there is combined with regulation and so on. But the risk appetite and the level of ambition in America is really driving growth. The innovation economy here and the willingness of people to start businesses, take risks, innovate, drive growth is definitely contributing to kind of US economic. Yeah, absolutely. But also the acceptancy of the fact that you make mistakes. So, in Europe it's not good to make mistakes. You often don't get a sense of time. Not good to make mistakes here either.
No, but it's more accepted. It's just like, hey, we do lots of stuff and of course we make some mistakes. And you can change. Absolutely. And so that's a bit of a cultural difference. Yeah. When you look at these leadership lessons, you know, as you talk to different leaders, you find yourself incorporating it somehow into the way you run the fund. Totally. Can you give a concrete example? I try to integrate all the good stuff I learned. It's really, really interesting, right? I mean, we try to steal everywhere we can.
Talk about something. I mean, you should money, but I know. No, no, but ideas. By the way, you know, imitation is the highest form of flour. Totally. Totally. Talk about some of your favorite guests. What characteristics do they share as leaders? Well, I think, I mean, in addition to you, of course. Yeah, put me aside. No, I think you can put them into different categories. Of course, speaking to the tech leaders is amazing, right? So you speak to Sam Altman, Jenson Huang, Bill Gates and so on. And they basically look into the future.
You know, they see what it looks like and you learn that. I think some of the people who are from different places than actually finance is quite fun, right? We did Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player in the world, comparing chess strategy with investment strategy. It's like, wow. You know, when do you take risks? Do you take more risks after you lost? Or do you take less risk? You know, very different from what we typically do. So just a lot of learnings from that. Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary-General on geopolitics and so on.
And then some of the really long-term thinkers, like the Wollenberg, since Sweden, really interesting. I would say it's perhaps the one thing that characterizes great investors. It's conviction and the ability to be contraria and not think about what other people think. And then be able to change your mind. And the combination of these stubborn and be able to change your mind, really, really rare. That's a great, great way to frame it.
What advice can you share about steps leaders should prioritize when they take a new job to lead an organization? I understand when you took this job, you actually kind of had a roadmap or a list of priorities that you wanted to follow. Do you have advice around that? Yeah, it was great. So I got this job. I rang the best sales I've ever met. And I said, hey, I got this new job. What should I do? I was like, well, what do you do? That's easy. You first have to talk to a lot of people in the firm. Do it before you start your job. Then you shall respect. They need to get to know you and you need to get to know them. You get more data points, so you make better decisions. They feel included. They feel heard so that when you make changes, they will be with you.
Then you put together a leader group. You do not hire people from the old side during your first year. You define your DNA of the firm and you show everybody else in the firm that you respect what they do. And then you make changes as a combined leadership group. You mustn't do it on your own because you can trigger what is called the corporate immune system, where basically they squeeze you out. So you do it as a combined group. And then you pick a few things, not too many, and don't make them the changes too fast. The people who fail are the people who try to do too much too fast. And so we made changes. And I think twice we felt that we were moving a bit too fast and we slowed down. But I think that's the way to do it.
You mentioned grit. I've always thought that grit is not just for leadership, but for success in life and business. The grit is a hugely, hugely valuable personal characteristic. Talk a little bit about how you think about grit and how it plays a role as people approach challenges. It's totally key. It's just how you cope with things, right? I think it's sometimes difficult to screen for it, but when you hire, you see what people have been doing. So I was interviewing this guy for a summer program. He said, hey, what have you done during your summers? I worked in a bakery. Okay, but I'm in seven summers in a row. Do you know when you need to wake up to work in a bakery? It's like three in the morning. Super early.
Super early. So we tried to find it. And I think we are in a world where there is perhaps a bit less grit than before. The younger generation have, on average, according to the specialists, a bit less grit because they've been protected by their parents. Parents are taking a lot of the decisions and the problems. And so therefore we have had less problems to cope with. And I think it's that's permanent or you think that's cyclical? Well, so that's interesting. But I do think it also explains some of the, you know, it's not easy to be young these days. And it could be that you just have too much protection. I think it's cyclical because I think the next generation is just like, hey, you know what, my parents kind of screwed me up. I'm certainly not going to do the same mistake. And so I think it's going to get, you know, into that kind of stuff.
In other words, my parents didn't get a hoot what I was doing. Oh, me neither. I mean, they basically said, come home in the street lights, go on. Absolutely. Okay, that certainly wasn't the way my kids grew up. Yeah, I mean, you know, my, I remember my father. He said, uh, nickel, have you heard about the hedge fund? It's like daddy, I've been, I worked for a hedge fund for 10 years now. Shift gears. You're passionate about European competitiveness. And it was interesting what you said a few moments ago when we were talking about, you know, innovation, economy and, and regulation. I mean, I just, I would just observe one of the things that, that, you know, I saw, you know, recently, the industry. You know, recently, it just kind of, I, I thought, you know, the European Union got so wrong. Was when the regulatory infrastructure came out and said, we have to protect Europe from AI. It's almost like the opposite.
How do we encourage Europe to be taking risks and investing in, in AI? Talk a little bit about what Europe can do to be more competitive. Yeah, it's a very, very difficult question, right? I mean, on AI, we think it needs some kind of regulation and oversight. But the thing is that in Europe, we have a lot of regulation. And in my mind, regulations are one, one, one by one, they're pretty good, right? There is a reason why you regulate that and why you regulate that and why you really get that. But it's a bit like you come into a bar and each bottle tastes pretty good. But when you put everything into a bucket, it doesn't taste so good. For the one I want I steal. Yeah, well. That's only like six. It's only six, yeah. Or whatever.
So it's very regulated. And I think that the kind of the heavy level of regulation combined with kind of competition authority, which has insisted that there should be huge competition in all areas, in all countries, means that you have a pretty fragmented market, right? There is not one big bank. In every country, you have three telecom operators. So you basically have nearly 30 in all of Europe, was three in the whole of the US. So you get quite small players in a lot of different places and that means that they are not globally competitive. Now this may be changing, hopefully, and I think it does. But you know, there is a lot of stuff to do and if you want to read a good report on this, it's a drug report, which came out a little while back. Great report. It's just the kind of things we need to do. Now, what you need to do takes, it costs a lot of money and it takes strong political will. And so we'll see what happens. Leadership takes leadership. Takes leadership. Yeah, it's not easy. Yeah. So to live in Europe and invest in America is pretty good. Yeah. I was going to say Europe is a great place to live. It's a fantastic place to live. And you know, there are some really serious questions about kind of social fabric and those kind of things, right? Sure. And social protection. And for sure we have that in Europe. Yeah.
I mean, one of the things that I've found fascinating is I've gotten to know you over the last, you know, five, six years is you love to learn. You have lots of diverse interests, you know, outside of finance, including degrees you've completed as an adult in art history and social psychology. Talk a little bit about getting those degrees as an adult and how it's affected, you know, kind of the way you invest, how it's affected kind of your thought process around life. Yeah. So it depends on, you know, how do you, how do you measure your life? Some people measure the success in money. I don't do that. I think, you know, some people think the people who's got the most money when he or she dies has won. So I think that's totally wrong. I think they have lost because first of all they should have given it away, right? But I think the person who knows the most when he or she dies, they are the winners. So you need to learn as much as you can. And so, you know, I try to learn all the time. So, and I think one of the most interesting thing I've studied is social psychology because there it kind of teaches you how people think, what kind of risk they take, what are the drivers in their lives and so on. And we've put quite a lot of that into work in the fund. It's the whole idea behind the investment simulator. It's just how you can learn and how, you know, what are your weaknesses as a trader and so on. That comes from that. How you use your analysis versus gut field or pattern recognition. That's interesting. You know, how you cope with being contrarian, all these kind of things. So I do think it's very interesting how you can combine things with finance. And most of the innovations these days come from how you combine, you know, information in new ways. I think it's really fascinating.
You know, you're touching a little bit on culture. Culture is hugely important success. I read an article by a Norwegian author who praised your form of leadership saying, I quote, you embody the image of a modern Viking. Always in motion, constantly active, busy. They were keen to explore. Yeah. Supposedly they were very consensus driven. So I don't know how they did that. It's like, hey, which village are we going to pillage? Let's vote for it. But supposedly, and it explains why leadership form in the Nordic countries is more consensual, supposedly. Somebody told me. Yeah. No, I think you want to be curious. I think you want to move around. I think you want to do different things. You know, it's important not to have two strong habits. It's important to break them up.
So, for instance, you know, when during the holiday you are the most happy. After it's over? No. The 43rd hour. That's after which you start to get habituated with where you are. So, it's a nice place. It's really sunny. It's wonderful. Wow. Blue water, right? It's just like amazing for the first 43 hours. And then it starts to become a habit. And so you need to break it up. You need to do some more things. So, for instance, I live in New York now for the whole of November. It's fantastic. Fantastic. You know, times I've never been more exciting. I wake up in the morning. I just can't wait to get out of bed. And it's just never been more exciting.
And let's not forget that this is the world we live in, right? We have technology change, has never been faster. Geobilitics, never more exciting. Hey, you have a selection coming up? Really exciting, too. Nikolai, thank you. This has been terrific. Really appreciate you taking the time to do it. Thank you very much. That was great.