Eh, so incredibly nice to see so many people early in the morning. And eh, what we will do today, or what our great communication team will do today, is to take you through the journey we have been on in the Oil Fund. Five years ago, we were closed and arrogant. Now we are open and I hope less arrogant and what they will hear today is to take you through that journey. I haven't seen the program because they say it's secret stamped and we are open about many things, but I don't get to see the program. Ehm, but it's like I think about communication, you are actually the most important in the company. Because without you, you can't get anything done at all.

And eh, when I came and sat down with 140 employees here in the beginning and talked about where the shoe pinched, it was quite obvious that we landed on three things that we should fix. One was performance, because we have to do that. Then it was the people because they were a bit neglected. And then it was communication because it was there was too little communication. And then Marte and the team have actually eh broken this up systematically and worked on improving all parts. And as I see it, simply put, internal communication is super important. Because without internal communication, we wouldn't have achieved the cultural change we have made in the fund. We have completely different platforms to communicate on. We have a completely different volume. We have a completely different type of content. And it's not just factual content, but it's cultural content that is changing attitudes eh and the way we do things. And then it's important for us as a global organization to connect with the overseas offices in a different way because they felt a bit lonely out there in the old days, but now they are much more closely connected to us. And many of you have the same problem.

External communication. Five years ago, there were four people in the oil fund who were allowed to speak publicly about the oil fund. Four people. So far this year, over 100 people have spoken about the oil fund externally to the media or in various presentations. And that naturally creates pride among those who present and it creates much better trust when people out there actually get to meet those who know what they are talking about. So it has been a huge journey. And then they have done a lot of other things that they will talk about later. But it has led to us now being the world's most open fund. And it's not just something we say, because there is actually a world championship in openness. And we have now won it three years in a row. And we are very pleased with that. And now we have won it so many times that they have decided to cancel the world championship. Eh, and that means that we are world champions forever.

Ehm, but what I thought about openness was that openness is good, because then outsiders can see what we are doing and gain more trust in what we are doing. But what I have understood is that openness goes both ways. And that by being open to the outside world, we also absorb things that happen outside the organization in a completely different way. We eh have much better exchange of eh learning. I think that's the reason why we are now leading in artificial intelligence because we have been open about everything we do and then people will share with us. And that is of course why we have invited all of you as well because we want to talk about communication with you, but we have a lot to learn from you too, so therefore we think this will be a super day.

So it is, to say the least, an exciting time to work in the fund and this is all that we have to keep track of. And for us, this forms the backdrop for the strategy eh that we are now laying down. And today you will get a little sneak peek at the strategy that we are presenting at 12 o'clock today. And what we have to work on is to achieve a strategy that makes us clear, relevant, and trust-building in a time characterized by much unrest. And as you see in this picture, we are prepared for a rainy day even when the sun shines on Manhattan. Nikolai was a bit uncomfortable taking this picture in the sun.

And with me, I have many talented colleagues who will be speaking. Let me mention Line in the picture and Head of Communications who will not speak today. Because without her, we would not have managed this through turbulent times. But before we sort of get started talking about communication, you need to know a little bit about the fund. So I reckon in a way that there is knowledge here, but it is the world's largest state fund. So we own a small piece of over 8,000 companies globally. And if you think of a company, we most likely own it. And then we cover more than 25% of the state budget. So more than 25% of the costs of the Norwegian state are covered by this fund. And it has increased enormously over the last few years. So our contribution is enormously important and we are in Norway in an extremely lucky position compared to all other countries around us. And then it is you who own it. 3.7 million per Norwegian it has become now. 21,000 billion under management these first two billion that were put in in 1996 have become. And it is so large that one can hardly imagine it.

And when I present this around the world, I was in Sweden a few weeks ago, they laugh at the sums, don't they, because it's so big. We are so eh eh privileged. Eh, and in many ways, we in Norway have found oil twice because we have these funds that have been put into the fund, which is around 5,000 billion. But then we have invested out in the stock markets, in bonds, in real estate, and now also unlisted infrastructure. And then we have in many ways found oil once again because the return is so high. So that was a very brief overview of what the fund is. And then eh it's okay that you know exactly this, because this is our governance model, which is a bit complex, but I will explain it eh very simply. And that is that this is a political construct and it's okay to know that. There are some capable politicians who came up with the idea that we should save money for future generations. So we should save, not spend all the money at once and get a kind of runaway economy. So it is the Stortinget that has then given the Ministry of Finance the task eh of creating a mandate. And it is the Ministry of Finance that is the owner of the fund. And thereafter, this task has been delegated to Norges Bank, which has then established Norges Bank Investment Management. And that is us, we manage this fund. But all major strategic changes, all major allocation decisions, are determined by our politicians. And it is very important to know, because it also means that they have determined the risk tolerance that the Norwegian people have. And the fact that we are 70% invested in stocks means that we have a large risk tolerance. Here we must be prepared for a lot of fluctuations. And that implies that we must communicate in a completely different way than if this were a fund that was much more invested in eh government bonds.

So we have a large risk picture that we must eh keep track of. And we must have good systems. We must analyze this eh and we must manage the risk. But not least, we must communicate very well around it. And I will talk about two of them. On this slide you see yes, it is climate risk, it is technological development. It is, after all, the entire concentration of power. How much these AI stocks, how much the entire technology sector eh has to say. Then there is geopolitical risk and reputational risk, which I will talk a little about. So we start with geopolitics. And you saw that very clearly in this introductory video how much is happening eh around the world. And our task is to protect this fund through changing market conditions. And geopolitical risk has become increasingly prominent and the time I spend on this is now considerably more. It was not something one hardly thought about a few years ago. And I usually say that when you are invested in over 8,000 companies in over 70 markets, something goes wrong somewhere in the world. Yes, we are probably invested, if not in the area, then perhaps also in a company where it goes eh wrong. And one must be aware of that. So what you see on this slide here is simply six of the geopolitical scenarios we are following particularly closely now. And they are mainly related to great power wars and extensive eh sanctions.

I shall just take a couple of examples. We are China Investibility. That is, of course, eh the risk that it becomes difficult to invest in Chinese companies due to investment restrictions from, for example, the USA or Europe. In the middle, we have wars you are well acquainted with, both in Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East. Harley scenario, isn't it? That the scenario, and then it's not a big chance that it will happen, but if it happens, it will have a major impact on the fund. It has the scenario here is, of course, a more regional war in the Middle East that affects energy supply. Russia-Ukraine is a war that affects that country. And then of course we have China, which one follows closely. Taiwan is an area eh you are familiar with. But once again a scenario, and there it is that it doesn't just become an innovation, but a larger war in that region. It's dark enough once again. This is not necessarily a high-probability scenario, but if it happens, it will affect this fund a lot. So what we do is publish so-called scenario analyses. We started eh with that a few years ago, but it was after eh a much-discussed report called the Sverdrutrapporten, which looks at geopolitical influence around the fund specifically and how the fund will develop further. we started communicating eh a lot eh around eh this eh and the eh the analyses we presented eh this year, they show three scenarios. And one of these scenarios is a fall of 40% in the fund with a more comprehensive debt crisis. And why is it so important for us to eh communicate around eh this? It is for expectation management, both of politicians and the Norwegian people about how much it can affect the fund the day one eventually eh stands there. And then it is actually the case that if the fund falls a lot eh then we are one of the few. Then everyone else around us will fall. Then it's a global scenario. Then we are one of the few who can buy.

Over to reputational risk. I show a road sign. I could have shown a person in a split. I sometimes feel like that. It's about meeting various expectations. And this autumn, we have really seen that the expectations of us in Norway and the expectations of us internationally, there is a growing gap. And I also observe that the consensus around international principles, which we balance how we are invested on, is also not necessarily present in the same way as before. And what does that mean for us eh when we communicate? And of course, it means eh that we we cannot necessarily communicate in completely different ways. We must adapt, but we must be very open about the challenges that lie in that. And we will do that in the next eh strategic period. And then we must also manage to stand in that split in the best possible way every single day. And then yes, we believe that a lot of the solutions lie in good eh communication and knowledge building.

In recent years, we have further increased transparency. Nikolai referred to this world championship which I will actually introduce. It is SEM Benchmarking eh who created the Global Transparency benchmark a few years ago. That year we didn't win, the Canadians won. Nikolai then went to Parliament and said: "It's okay to be beaten by the Canadians in ice hockey, but not in openness." And then we came back the year after and then we had eh won. And now eh in the latest ranking, we have full marks on all these parameters. And here it is measured eh how we report on all these four categories on the websites. And it is the websites that are our entire transparency machinery. And then we present a new eh strategy eh today with a picture of a beautiful mountain on Senja, wasn't it? Segla. Segla I have now learned that this is. And even though this fund is designed to be perpetual, we operate with three-year eh strategic plans. This may possibly sound a bit strange, but I think it is an incredibly great eh advantage, because it means that we eh can set the direction. Eh it is primarily a tool that is very important for the organization, because we must agree on what the ambitions are going forward. But then it also means that, you saw in the turbulent world, the previous strategic plan did not mention AI at all and we have worked extremely hard on that eh in recent years. So one must have these stations where one recalibrates and eh in the strategy that we are presenting today, the goal is to be the leading and most respected investment fund in the world. And that rests on five pillars. It is investments, technology, operational robustness and risk management. It is people and then yes, it is of course communication?

And this is so important for me to emphasize eh and I hope that all those who do not have communication as part of their business strategy go home and talk to their leader about this. Because if you are not part of the business strategy, how are you going to get the organization on board with that? How are you going to get the leadership on board? How are you going to get all the employees on board? So I think that is extremely important. And then within that strategy, eh we have a clear ambition. We shall be the world's most open fund. Eh we see that eh openness and knowledge building is eh very important for us. From the reputation survey that we eh do eh every single year, we see that the more people know about us, the more they trust us. So we have, in a way, like a real eh basis to say that building knowledge has an effect. And then we also see among some target groups that there is less knowledge. And then we can go in and build knowledge there. I will come back to that.

And then we also say that this strategy, but openness has its limitations because it should not be at the expense of the fund's financial interests. And we will also be much more open about that. So it should never harm our credibility or legitimacy in the global markets. So that also means that we must be open about difficult choices. We must be open about trade-offs. We must communicate what the fund is and we must communicate what the fund is not. and a little about how we are going to talk about risk and how we communicate around the whole picture that is moving around us. You got a little taste of that in the introduction. So in the strategic plan, we have three goals. You can read them here, but I will go through them eh one by one. So we start in Norway. And then the goal is to build knowledge to increase trust among our most important stakeholders in Norway. So simple, but not necessarily so easy to implement.

So eh we distinguish between two target groups in Norway in this strategy. The first is what we call our most important stakeholders. The second is the Norwegian people. So for the most important stakeholders, it is illustrated by the Stortinget, so it is not surprising that it is decision-makers, then it is of course eh media, eh then it is the financial environment, and then we will also broaden it in relation to our important institutions. Because what it is about is providing deeper insight and understanding so that they can again make informed decisions. They can make their own decisions, but they must be informed. And then we naturally want a factual public debate. And then it is the Norwegian people, especially younger target groups, about whom we will also hear more today. And there are completely different prerequisites. They know much less about the funds. They must build knowledge from scratch. And that requires a different approach.

And then we write in the strategy that we want a focus on core messages. That also sounds incredibly basic. Eh, but we believe that a lot of the key lies there in becoming even clearer about the core message. Eh, what is it? It is the most fundamental. What is openness? Why do we exist? How do we manage this fortune? And it's not always easy to come up with these core messages, so of course own channels eh are very important, but it is also knowledge building from scratch. Knowledge building among the young. We will hear more eh about how we work with eh social media eh from half-year. Of course, very important towards younger target groups who do not read newspapers eh follow TV and so on eh like the older generations. Then we have spent a lot of time in recent years recruiting the very best people. We want the best people who in a way study anything at all to think of us as an employer. So we eh have created a guest lecture program and spend a lot of time being out at eh universities. We have created an eh investment club for women because we see that we have few female applicants. And these are things we can do. It is a very long-term effort. One does not necessarily see results eh immediately. We have some results because we actually have two students from that club who work in the communications department today. And then of course this transparency machinery of ours, which must also communicate very well with social media and not least think anew and more campaign-oriented.

And then we shall go out into the world. As an investor, we depend on being welcomed and respected in the markets in which we operate. And very many of our employees are in ongoing dialogue with external actors. It can be companies we are invested in, it can be regulators, marketplaces or other investors. So it is, they are incredibly important to us. Eh, and then we work very actively on building strong relationships, strengthening our position as a knowledgeable and responsible owner. And the target groups here are, first and foremost, the companies we invest in, we invest in 70 markets, we cannot run around and necessarily be in 70 markets, we in the communications department focus on the markets where we have offices, so it is Singapore eh London and Europe, and then it is New York USA. And what we do is that we primarily use our employees. And I will come back to that. And secondly, it is the international media houses. Because out there, our channels are not necessarily seen or used much, with the exception of podcasts and some YouTube. So there are of course good relationships with the international media houses. We have good relationships, but we must continue to build that enormously important for us.

Just in August, it peaked a bit then. Before that, we saw an average of 3,000 media cases per month about the fund. In August alone, we saw over 8,000 media cases about the fund. In a normal month, approximately 60% 70% of those are eh international. So it is clear that this is a very large picture for us to keep track of. This graph was very busy so I saw I had to explain it because into it eh now we have had a strategy that went from 2023 to 2025. When Nikolai came in here, one of the first things we did was to change. I have guidelines for everything. We have finance. We love it. Eh it was to change the guideline for speaking externally because it said there that you must have approval and you can't really do it. So we changed it. And now all our employees are allowed to go out and speak at a conference. Of course, there are things they must consider. Eh, but we work very hard in a way, like economies of scale. How is it going to be for people to be able to come out and deliver on this themselves? So Nikolai made a quarter eh just a few years ago. And then there is the graph on the side here which you see all the other eh employees. We have Nikolai is a little over 100. He actually understated. Think about it. 147 employees have represented the fund externally in the year that has been. And that is a doubling eh in just the three years. And why is it important for us? Well, number one, you don't necessarily have, now he has taken a new term, but you don't necessarily have the man, the woman you have at the top. Eh, it's not just us in the management group who should go out and speak. Eh, but in addition, you have employees, you have subject matter experts who speak best to those target groups and in those markets out there. So it has become enormously important for us.

And then we have the podcast. Oslo's, no, sorry, Norway's largest business podcast. Downloaded over 11 million times. But what eh surprised us and what we didn't quite see when we started this was how enormously important it would become for us globally. And now it is primarily important for us globally in terms of creating eh the respect and the credibility out there in the financial markets. So it increases our international reach. And then eh it also means that we actually get an even better eh dialogue eh with the companies and they will meet our portfolio managers eh more often.

Last goal. Very important. Nikolai used all the time talking about it. Internal communication. We shall facilitate employees doing their best through effective internal communication is eh the goal. We have worked very hard with eh internal communication eh in recent eh years, but we actually only have one person traveling around eh who works full-time with it. So, once again economies of scale eh you must have. So we see internal communication as a shared responsibility, both within the communication department, but also across MBM. So we have a dedicated SharePoint area where employees find everything to be able to communicate effectively. And then in the next strategic period, we will have a strong focus on investment content. And that is important for us to be able to think long-term, but also to highlight good examples, good stories, inspire others. Then there is number two, which I highlight, which is our international offices. That does not mean that we will not focus here at the head office eh in Oslo, but we must bring these offices together. And how do you do that when you operate in so many different time zones, so many different cultures, employees from more than 33 nationalities. So we have started with something we call global town halls. So four times a year we tour around. And then we hold general meetings at the various overseas offices and highlight good examples from the overseas offices to try to bring this together eh and bring forward good stories. And this year we have had a lot of focus on AI, so AI examples have been used in all these town halls.

And then in the new strategy, there is a sentence eh that when we eh on Monday eh presented this to the organization. I spent some time talking about. And it is internal communication is a shared responsibility. Eh, we use eh, we engage, we have two-way communication, we have something we call Monday meetings for all employees eh eh call in and talk about what is happening eh in the markets here and now. So it's about if you've had an experience, you have to share what you learn. It is a shared responsibility to contribute to information sharing. And it's getting better and better. We have introverted people. We have people who like to sit and nurture their Excel spreadsheets, but we have come a long way. And then we are of course betting fully on AI. And that is the segway to introducing Sigur and Sara who will talk about it.