The newly-installed head of Norway’s NOK10.2tn (€968bn) sovereign wealth fund has made his first change to the organisation’s management line up by removing Karsten Kallevig, who built up the oil fund’s NOK295bn portfolio of unlisted real estate, from the leadership team.

NBIM also said its new leader group was scheduled to be announced in October, suggesting further changes are afoot.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), announced that Kallevig has been appointed special adviser to chief executive officer Nicolai Tangen, with a focus on real asset matters.

“Kallevig will step out of the leader group and looks forward to contributing in a new role,” the central bank division said in a statement on Friday afternoon.

Up to now, Kallevig has been CIO real estate at NBIM, a role he took on in April 2019 after the separate unit he ran for many years, Norges Bank Real Estate Management (NBREM), was liquidated and its operation integrated into NBIM.

Tangen, who replaced Yngve Slyngstad as CEO at the beginning of this month after much political wrangling over his appointment, said: “I am pleased to have Karsten in a more strategic role.

He has built a high-quality organisation over the past decade and carries with him valuable investment experience which will benefit us going forward.”

Meanwhile, NBIM said it is carrying out an internal process to recruit a chief real asset officer – a new role – and that Kallevig would be working closely with that person.

Having long recommended expanding the GPFG’s mandate to include investment in unlisted infrastructure as well as unlisted real estate, NBIM received the go-ahead from the Finance Ministry in April 2019 to invest up to 2% of the fund’s value in unlisted renewable energy infrastructure via the fund’s existing dedicated environmental mandates.

Kallevig said he was “very proud of what we have achieved over the past decade”.

“The organisation is well positioned for the future and I look forward to acting in a different capacity going forward,” he said.

Having worked for many years in London and then Tokyo, Kallevig first came to NBIM 10 years ago as global head of real estate asset strategies.

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