Shipping chief says investors baulking at Norway’s weak krone

Norway’s weak currency is leading some investors to think twice about equity listings in the Nordic country, according to the chairman of one of the leading shippers of oil products and liquefied petroleum gas.

“The Norwegian krone is just not a favored currency today,” Andreas Sohmen-Pao, chairman of BW Group, said at Pareto Securities’ annual energy conference in Oslo on Wednesday. “We’re starting to hear investors in other parts of the world saying we don’t want to take so much krone risk. And the result of this is the statistics are starting to clearly support US listings.”

The krone, the second-worst performer in the G-10 space of major currencies this year, weakened over the past 12 months mainly as the Norges Bank raised rates at a slower pace than the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. With a long history in shipping and the growth of its oil and gas industry, the Oslo Stock Exchange has an overweight in companies across the petroleum supply chain.