Allan Nedergaard, Nordic business development manager for Northern Trust, said the company would be keen to do more business with OPF. He added that Northern Trust, which has been present in the Nordic region for 15 years and has some 30 clients there, would continue to review opportunities for opening an office in one of the Nordic countries. There was no timetable for this plan, however.

He said: “We’ll do it when it makes good business sense. We constantly review our presence there and talk to our clients, but we have not so far heard a clear voice saying they need this.”

Hakon Wister, controller for OPF, said a custodian had not previously been needed for its fixed income portfolio since the funds were in a global bond fund. Now that a discretionary mandate was being employed, however, the fund had sought a custodian.

The fund, which provides pension provision for employees of the

municipality of Oslo and companies in which the municipality has a majority interest, recently awarded a NKr2,090m (€257m) global fixed income mandate to investment manager Rogge Global Partners. Northern Trust will provide custody services for this mandate.

The company is hoping to follow up its success with OPF with further custody mandates to come. Mr Nedergaard confirmed that Northern Trust had been pre-qualified, or short-listed, to provide custody services to Denmark’s ATP as well.

Localisation was a strong selling point for Northern Trust, he said, arguing that the company’s 15-strong Nordic team, which included speakers of Nordic languages, made the company’s custody services more attractive to pension funds from the region.

TE

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