The Capital Innovator
A good mix of finance, risk focus, application development, macro and liquid investments have been the ingredients when Morten Christensen built up an asset management environment internally at Aars. The team of four people has ensured that the family business has freedom of action when needed. Now it has even more strings to its bow.
"We have to be extremely flexible and liquid to succeed," says Morten Christensen. The internal asset management environment in Aars, which manages several billion kroner, ensures that the family business has the financial muscle to be able to turn quickly when opportunities arise.
"It is precisely in situations like this that our model is at its best," he says. In the spring of 2025, such an opportunity arose. It was a real test of the model.
Major fluctuations
In the first quarter of 2025, after a thorough process in the direct investment team, Aars received an offer to purchase 70 percent of Northcom, a company that provides critical communications solutions to the military, police, fire department, and other emergency services in the Nordic region.
"Northcom was a perfect investment for Aars. It is a company that provides critical communications solutions, which is in line with the owners' vision, and which has positioned itself in a rapidly growing market," says Christensen. Aars accepted the purchase, and the agreement was signed in April.
At the same time, some of the owners of the family business had undergone a generational change the previous year, with Stein and Reidun Førde transferring their shares in Aars to their four children: Øyvind, Mari, Ingrid, and Ragnhild. In connection with this, Mari chose to be bought out of the family business.
"In total, this meant that a lot of cash would be leaving the company in 2024 and 2025," says Christensen.
When the purchase of Northcom was finalized, even more cash disappeared: In the first quarter of 2025, the capital base was close to NOK 7 billion. Two quarters later, it was close to NOK 5.5 billion, even after payment of annual dividends.
"That's quite a lot of liquidity in a short period of time. It went very well, because that's exactly what the model is designed for.
Started with 1.5 billion
Christensen has extensive experience in the financial industry, from brokerage firms, Storebrand, and Kværner. Around the turn of the millennium, he helped start the capital and pension advisory company Griff Kapital.
"It was at Griff Kapital that I began working with various family-owned investment companies, such as the Møller family. After nearly 15 years of operation, we were in the process of selling the company, and I came into contact with Aars in the fall of 2015. After some discussion, the owners challenged me to tell them what I could bring to the table, and that was the start of our collaboration," he says.
The Møller and Schage family branches had the previous year consolidated their ownership and businesses into the newly established family investment company Aars. With Morten Christensen on the team, the starting signal was given for what is now Aars' in-house asset management.
"At that time, Aars had around NOK 1.5 billion in capital, managed externally on a conservative basis. We had good discussions with the owners about how they wanted to position the company in terms of risk and goals, established a new investment structure, and built the team by bringing in more talented people.
Gradual changes
-That simple? -Well, no. The lesson is that you have to make changes gradually when it comes to family-owned companies, and not do too much at once. We went from having one portfolio to having three portfolios after a few years. An important prerequisite was that Aars should have no debt, and we would invest the NOK 1.5 billion from the outset based on three criteria:
- Investments must be liquid.
- The capital is reserve capital, which means that it should have a lower risk than pure equity investments.
- The capital serves as support for the owners' dividends, acquisitions, and so on.
Today, the asset management team in Aars manages just over NOK 6 billion. This is divided between three portfolios:
Liquidity portfolio: Bonds and money market instruments with low risk (NOK 2.5 billion).
Risk portfolio of Nordic liquid equities: That is, companies that have different characteristics than those we own ourselves. Global companies with moderate leverage, strong market position, and robust margins (NOK 1.5 billion).
Risk portfolio: Credit, interest rate instruments, equities, hedge instruments, etc. Portfolio with lower risk than equities, also with liquid investments (NOK 2 billion).
Finance expert and Norwegian math champion
"I am fascinated by the dynamics of the financial markets. It's a good mix of finance, psychology, behavior, risk management, and geopolitics. It never stops," says Christensen.
At the end of 2025, the asset management team in Aars consisted of four people.
"Aars is an attractive place to work, so we have attracted talented people. Some are generalists, others specialists. Three of us have a traditional background in finance, but with very different experiences. The fourth is a physicist and former Norwegian math champion.
The team has developed an application for portfolio management in asset management, as well as a capital allocation model that makes it possible to project values, liquidity, and investment capacity for the overall ownership using scenarios and stress testing. We also receive good feedback on these models from external environments, such as banks.
We are currently further developing our applications for management, allocation, and risk management using our own programming and AI as tools for effective development. We work with a lot of strange things, but everything is connected in some way, he says.
Increased on "Liberation Day"
"We look at the big picture in the world. What drives interest rates, stock markets, currencies, and macroeconomics? Then we bring in the companies that Aars owns and ask them what they perceive to be their biggest risk factors. The sum of this analysis provides direction for how Aars' capital should be managed and what level of risk is considered appropriate," he continues.
He cites an example: "When Trump took office as president in January 2025, we were very excited about the new administration. But we did not reduce the risk in our asset management. The markets have a different dynamic. They price in risk. And we saw that the president is guided by developments in the stock markets.
After Trump's "Liberation Day" in April, when the stock markets were sent down because Trump threw in completely new uncertainty about global trade policy, we increased our share of equities. But we held back on further risk increases for the rest of the year due to continued high political and geopolitical risk. This gave us a return of NOK 350 million, around six percent, for the three portfolios combined.
Ten billion
Over the past three years, in-house asset management at Aars has generated a total return of well over NOK 1 billion. At the beginning of 2026, Aars merged Asset Management and Direct Investments. Christensen is moving into a new role as CFO of the family business, while a new manager is being recruited to head up the new Investments division.
"This is something I have been keen to do for many years. The investment team now has around ten billion kroner at its disposal and ten talented people around one table.
We will continue to work actively with risk and allocation. Over the next ten years, Aars aims to double the proportion of liquid investments from 25 to 50 percent in order to have the flexibility to effectively manage risk in macro and turbulent markets.
To succeed in this, we need good, systematic analysis. This has always been important, and is no less important now, when the world is extremely uncertain.