Nordea

"The old feuds with former drinking buddies and friends were history, a new court was in place. At the forefront was none other than Little Wolf, Tor Olav Trøim, who was never far away. Just as loyal, and apparently always in the shipowner's favor, was Nordea's Calle Steen, the man who had conjured up a loan of one and a half billion during the banking crisis ten years earlier. Among brokers, many would like to be in the inner circle of the court, but undoubtedly, one finds the brokerage firm Platou there. They were the world's leading ship brokerage firm in the early 70s along with British Clarkson but fell to mediocrity in Norway. The contact with Fredriksen brought the firm back towards old heights and record results, thanks to the socially intelligent chief Peter Anker and the experienced broker Wilhelm Holst. In stocks, Fearnley and their Harald Moræus Hansen are never far away. They have been good at finding undervalued shipping stocks worldwide, especially in Asia. With the great interest in offshore, eventually Pareto entered the innermost circle, their Stein Schie being for many years John Fredriksen's court broker on the offshore sector when he worked at the company Normarine Offshore, and he brought the client into Pareto. Fredriksen still has some of his old friends, such as Petter Olsen and Petter Thorendal. But with limited time in Norway, it can only be sporadic contact; business and family take all the time. And after all, it has been twenty-five years since he moved from the country. Both geographical distance and tens of billions in economic distance tend to create distance."

"For an ordinary debt collection agency, growth depends on acquiring new corporate customers with many bad payers. The secret is to recruit diligent employees and create good routines for following up on cases. In the fifteen years Norbrekken ran collections, it was good business, but his major coup came when he realized the gold mines hidden in the major banks' loan portfolios. Aktiv Kapital's first coup was to buy all the loan letters from Storebrand Finans. There was a lot of consumer loans, not too high amounts on each. Thus, he could let the fee machine run, and the poor customers soon discovered that it was not enough to pay the original debt. Now, interest and fees had to be paid. A loan of 4500 kroner could easily end up costing over 17,000 kroner in the end. The really big coup for Aktiv Kapital was in 2003, when they secured all the defaulted loans from Nordea, formerly Kreditkassen. For just 262.5 million kroner, they took over the debt relations of 21,200 Norwegian private individuals who collectively owed 3.7 billion kroner."

"From Nordea, they thus bought debt for 3.7 billion kroner, but only paid about seven percent of the outstanding amount. In Steinar’s example, this means that Aktiv Kapital took over the debt relationship of 1.5 million kroner, but only paid 105,000 kroner for the debt letter. Then it was just to turn the thumbscrews on the poor debt slave: If you brought in more than 105,000 kroner, everything above was pure net. And if the debtor could only manage to pay interest, it was calculated from the whole loan amount of 1.5 million kroner – which gave Aktiv Kapital 15 times as high interest as normal. Such business could not fail!"

"Eventually, the brokers' suggestions also come outside of shipping; everyone knows that Big Wolf and Little Wolf are fast, non-bureaucratic, and liquid. And hungry. Sometimes this leads to surprising results, like the raid on Pan Fish. Admittedly, Fredriksen is an avid salmon fisher, but it's not obvious that he should dream of creating new structures in the salmon industry. However, Trøim insists that the investment in Pan Fish was their own idea, something they had thought about for a long time. Since Nordea held a controlling share (48 percent), they could approach Fredriksen's old friend in the bank, Calle Steen, and present the proposal. It undoubtedly helped the bank's decision-making that they made almost 800 million from the sale. The purchase in Pan Fish had an immediate Fredriksen effect throughout the industry. Share prices rose, and everyone became richer on paper. Fredriksen, who quickly had a paper profit of several hundred million kroner. Then followed a massive investment in Fjord Seafood of 25 percent, and new shakes in the industry. Everyone believes there will be a major merger between Pan, Fjord, and Cermaq, and if so, it would have been high odds that it was John Fredriksen who would force this. Everything Fredriksen has touched in recent years has yielded gains. Gradually, his fortune is spread across multiple industries and not as susceptible to extreme fluctuations. It is not certain he will be on the brink several more times."