Nicolai Tangen told journalists yesterday, after his text chats with Elon Musk made headlines in Norway, that he needed to be more formal in the way he communicated from now on.

New details of text messages between the Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) chief executive officer and the world’s second-richest man, according to Forbes Richest World’s Billionaires List 2024, emerged yesterday in the Norwegian media. The messages revealed that Musk regarded NBIM voting down a huge pay package for him at last year’s Tesla annual general meeting as Tangen refusing him a favour.

Norway’s NOK20.2trn (€1.7trn) Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which is managed by NBIM, owns a 1.1% voting stake in Tesla, of which Musk is the CEO.

On 14 October last year, Musk is shown in the text exchange, according to a report in Norwegian business daily DN, to have declined an invitation from Tangen to dinner at his home, and to a conference, and followed this by writing:

“When I ask you for a favor, which I very rarely do, and you decline, then you should not ask me for one until you’ve done something above nothing to make amends. Friends are as friends do.”

This message, and others, were initially held back by NBIM when other messages in the text exchange were published some weeks ago, according to DN, and NBIM only released them in the past few days after news website E24 complained to the civil ombudsman.

The NBIM CEO faced a barrage of questions at NBIM’s annual results press conference in Oslo yesterday about the messages, with one journalist asking whether he regretted the wording in his messages.

“I don’t think the wording was so terribly off, but clearly it’s a communication channel which is not perfect for that kind of use and situation,” Tangen said.

“I need to be a bit more formal in our communications and I take that on board, I am now being a bit more bureaucratic and careful in my SMSs.”

Tangen said he assumed the favour Musk referred to in the exchange was his proposed salary package that NBIM voted down, but that the two men had never actually talked about the package.

Nicolai Tangen (NBIM) and Elon Musk (Tesla)

NBIM CEO Nicolai Tangen (left) faced a barrage of questions at NBIM’s annual results press conference in Oslo yesterday about text messages with Elon Musk

He said he was not involved in NBIM’s work relating to the salaries of CEOs of companies the GPFG invested in. “We have a separate ESG department to take care of that,” he said. 

“People think we have a close relationship,” Tangen said of Musk, adding: “We did a podcast for 30 minutes, and that’s how I know him.”

In another of the newly-published text messages, Musk appears unhappy that his earlier messages had appeared in the Norwegian press.

Asked yesterday what he thought about the text messages being made public, Tangen said: “First of all, the freedom of information act is a fantastic thing – it’s a cornerstone of Norwegian democracy and it’s very good.

“But it is sometimes problematic to explain to foreigners that messages which they didn’t know were going to made public were made public, so that’s kind of the dilemma, because we really value and treasure the relationship with the companies we are in invested in, and it’s difficult sometimes if you compromise too much on privacy,” he said.

Those dialogues were important, he added.

IPE has contacted Tesla requesting comment from Musk.

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