After nine years as an analyst at equity long/short hedge fund Taiga Fund, Øystein Kvaerner has joined DNB Asset Management to launch a new fund focused on the sports, lifestyle, and entertainment sectors. Kvaerner has been nurturing the idea of a sports and entertainment fund since his 20s, when he was one of Norway’s top middle-distance runners.
“We are incredibly pleased that Øystein has now become part of our team at DNB Asset Management, and that in a few weeks he will become Portfolio Manager for our newest fund: DNB Sport & Entertainment,” announces the team at DNB Asset Management. “We had just started thinking about a fund with this theme when Øystein contacted us with a fund concept that resonated very well with our ideas about the opportunities this investment strategy offers. So we had to seize the opportunity, and hired Øystein,” says Knut Hellandsvik, Chief Investment Officer at DNB Asset Management.
“We are incredibly pleased that Øystein has now become part of our team at DNB Asset Management, and that in a few weeks he will become Portfolio Manager for our newest fund: DNB Sport & Entertainment.”
Kvaerner spent nine years as an equity analyst at the hedge fund boutique Taiga Fund Management before joining DNB Asset Management in September. Prior to Taiga, he worked for two years as a consultant in Bain & Company’s private equity group. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a Master of Law from the University of Oslo.
For nine years, Kvaerner was part of Taiga Fund’s investment team under co-managers Ola Wessel-Aas and Andreas Petterøe. The team follows a concentrated, value-oriented, long-biased approach and has been one of the best-performing stock-picking boutiques in the Nordic hedge fund industry. They also engage in opportunistic single-stock short-selling to enhance overall portfolio performance rather than as a hedging strategy. Taiga Fund’s NOK share class, included in the Nordic Hedge Index, has delivered an annualized return of 12.0 percent since mid-2009 with annualized volatility of 10.1 percent.
