(Bloomberg) The region of Trondelag is the cradle of Norway’s Winter Olympic dominance, with 14 gold medals over the past two events alone. Now, Jomar Kilnes, a former hedge fund manager who has come home after more than a decade in the Bahamas and the U.S., is showing that delivering outsized investment returns is the area’s real forte. His Forte Tronder fund, which mainly invests in companies with local links or production, returned 51 percent in 2016, making it the top performer of all Norwegian funds.
“We saw uncorrelated businesses of oil, fish farming, local banks and technology that we could build a high quality portfolio with,” Kilnes, a portfolio manager at Trondheim-based Forte Fondsforvaltning AS, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.While champion skiers such as Petter Northug and Marit Bjorgen are both from the mid-Norway region, its real assets lie underwater — both in the form of fish and oil.
