to a special conference in the united states. private jets were supplied, sting provided the entertainment, it cost you personally millions of dollars. and lo and behold, you got the job a few months later. that was a little strange, wasn t it? it was strange. the thing was that the invitation this was a fantastic seminar that i put together and it always been my dream to put together a seminar where we discussed all kinds of things from social psychology to economics and music and all kinds of things that i m interested in, art and so on, and it was planned for a couple of years in advance. the invitations went out 1.5 years before, so of course had nothing to do with thatjob. the unfortunate thing is. didn t it? the unfortunate thing for you was knowing the job was becoming available when you flew these dignitaries to the united states? no, thejob discussion started afterwards. i should also say that one third of the people
in the united states. private jets were supplied, sting provided the entertainment, it cost you personally millions of dollars. and lo and behold, you got the job a few months later. that was a little strange, wasn t it? it was strange. the thing was that the invitation this was a fantastic seminar that i put together and it always been my dream to put together a seminar where we discussed all kinds of things from social psychology to economics and music and all kinds of things that i m interested in, art and so on, and it was planned for a couple of years in advance. the invitations went out 1.5 years before, so of course had nothing to do with that job. the unfortunate thing is. didnt it? the unfortunate thing for you was knowing the job was becoming available when you flew these dignitaries to the united states? no, thejob discussion started afterwards. i should also say that one third of the people in the seminar were norwegian and two thirds were from
individual notion or stake is and for each norwegian in a country of five billion and $700,000. so they really care that they can trust you. they really do, yes, absolutely. so one final thought then on this and your suitability for thejob. it transpired that in your own personal life and in your role as running the hedge fund, you haven t taken advantage of the tax advantages that come in some tax havens in the cayman island and jersey were two that you use. you then have joined the sovereign wealth fund which is absolutely committed to ethical behaviour in all of the companies that invest in. do you regard tax avoidance is ethical behaviour? there was never any tax avoidance. and we use the same structure as most people who live in the uk do. in other words. a lot of people use trusts and i had a trust which to all types of rules. it s not a question of whether it was legal it s weather in
actually the oil fund, the sovereign wealth fund had to stop a trade in rolls royce shares because they were actually being sold by somebody representing your hedge fund? and you d already been appointed to thejob. and it did look like a profound conflict of interest with them again, did you not see it? there was a particular case there which i didn t know about. i was not part of the capital. it didn t look at, did it? well, you can always conscrew these type of relationships afterwards but there was no correlation whatsoever. i suppose itjust comes back to the fundamentally important position you now have inside your own country. because every single norwegian has a stake in this fun for the view of a calculator that anybody can look at online where they can figure out what the fund is worth at any given time, roughly one point four trillion today. and then they could work out what their own
strange, was in it? it was strange. the thing was that the invitation .net this was a fantastic seminar that i put together and it always been my dream to put together a seminar where we discussed all kinds of things from social psychology to economics and music and all kinds of things that i m interested in, art and so on. and it was planned for a couple of years in advance. the invitations went out a year and a half before. so of course had nothing to do with thatjob. the unfortunate thing is. was that for you it was knowing the job was becoming available when you flew these dignitaries to the united states. no, thejob discussion started afterwards. i should also say that one third of the people in the seminar were norweigen and two thirds were from the uk and elsewhere. there s another issue and it s aboutjudgement. i think it s one that if i may say so come up probably still norwegians