Nicolai Tangen runs Norway’s $1.7 trillion investment fund. Can he use that leverage to change business’s bad habits?

That spring, Nicolai Tangen, the Norwegian founder of London hedge fund AKO Capital, was picked by Norway’s central bank to be the next CEO of its gargantuan oil-and-gas-financed investment fund, whose value had soared above $1 trillion. The shorthand “oil fund” is becoming a misnomer: While NBIM’s original assets came from Norway’s oil and gas revenues, only about one-third now do; the rest are derived from the fund’s market performance, according to Tangen. “Every Norwegian knows Nicolai Tangen by name, but no more than a half-percent would know the name of the head of the asset management department of the Finance Ministry, who is probably 20 times more powerful,” says Sony Kapoor, an economist and former investment banker and an expert on sovereign wealth funds.