Orkla Finans

"Wittusen dismantled Røkke and Breskovich's plan. For a while, it looked very bleak, and Breskovich realized that the battle was lost: "Let's give up and go home. This project looks like Berlin after the war," he stated. But Wittusen had no intention of giving up. He just wanted to extract all the knowledge from the new clients, and after many tough rounds, he was satisfied. Out came a business plan that Orkla Finans then presented to several Norwegian banks. In a short time, Wittusen achieved the incredible: securing not just one, but three different financing offers. The choice fell on Bergen Bank."

"Røkke proposed a brilliant approach from his perspective. What about letting Orkla Finans be the financial adviser for both parties? Incredibly, the Andenæs family agreed to the proposal. Thus, the brokerage firm that Røkke had almost single-handedly kept alive was engaged to price the two companies. In return, Avantor would get both the chairman and the CEO in the new company if they just agreed to buy Gjelsten & Røkke Eiendom for the price determined by Orkla Finans. According to the brokerage firm, the values were not small. Deducting debt, Gjelsten & Røkke Eiendom was worth 620 million kroner, Orkla Finans believed. It was quite a value increase from the first, faltering attempts with the Moldehallen in the mid-80s. The golden coup was Elkem Eiendom, which, according to Orkla Finans, was approaching a billion in gross value. Deducting debt, there was no doubt that the effort had more than doubled in just over a year. The Avantor management did not take the values at face value, but, tempted by the bait of filling the leadership positions and with a bit of a discount, a deal was made. The outcome was that Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten ended up owning 65 percent of the “new” Avantor. But what about Jan Petter Storetvedt? Did they really sacrifice their loyal property manager to get in through the back door at the Oslo Stock Exchange via Avantor? Not at all, it was just Avantor's CEO Leif E. Johansen who thought so. He celebrated May 17th in the usual way and showed up at Avantor's general meeting the next day to convince the shareholders to accept the offer. They applauded him into the CEO seat for the new major company, and Johansen could face the summer as leader of one of the largest real estate players in the country. Two months later, he was fired by Kjell Inge Røkke because the collaboration allegedly "did not develop as expected." Consequently, Johansen had to walk out with a million in severance pay and left the chief's chair he had occupied for 12 years to Jan Petter Storetvedt. The former chairman Rolf Gulbrandsen remained a bit longer, but by the turn of the year, it was Bjørn Rune Gjelsten who was running the shop. For it is power that rules, and with 65 percent of the shares, there was no doubt about who had the final word."

"Only a few months later, the last piece showed what puzzle Kjell Inge Røkke had laid. It then became known that Orkla Finans had been hired to turn the football madness into shiny kroner. It smelled of a future stock listing from a mile away. First, Røkke founded the investment company Wyndmore N.V. in the Dutch Antilles. He then transferred his 80 percent of Wimbledon and 88 percent of Molde there. And who else but real estate director Jan Petter Storetvedt emerged from the great nothing and occupied the director position. "It's my job to try to make the best out of those investments," he stated to the press. At the next step was stock market listing, most observers immediately thought. And that was exactly what the court broker Orkla Finans was commissioned to evaluate. The idea was to get other investors to inject money into a project that valued Wimbledon at over 300 million kroner and Molde at 100 million. Sam Hammam certainly knows what he is thinking, and it is to lead Wimbledon into the future European League and possible major revenues from pay television. Gjelsten shares the visions: "We have ambitions for a fruitful collaboration between Molde and Wimbledon to turn Wimbledon into one of the big clubs – not just in England, but in Europe.""