CFO Kjetil M. Ebbesberg

I am 49 years old, married to Mette and we have two children: our son Nikolas (22) and our daughter Helena (18). Nikolas studies Computer science at the University of Oslo and Helena is a second year student at a high school in Oslo.

We also have a dog, a Great Dane named Athena (8). She is the joy of the entire family. For a GD she is rather small, however still weighs 65 kg. We were not supposed to get a dog, despite heavy lobbying from the kids for years. Then one beautiful summer day at the parade street of Oslo my wife spotted this beautiful Great Dane, she fell in love (again…) and suddenly, the vote for a family dog turned three against 1…

As to personal interests I have always been very interested in music and beyond listening at home I often go to rock concerts with friends or with family members. I try to stay reasonably fit and my preference is playing football and bicycling, which I regularly do with friends. Or else I run or go skiing during the winter (mostly cross country, but also downhill). I also enjoy doing building work on my house – inside and outside. I find that really relaxing as I then get to use my brain for different tasks than I usually do. Now, however, I am moving into an apartment in the center of Oslo and I guess I will have less opportunities for those kinds of activities. My most favorable time-off activity, though, is to spend time with my family. I have realized that kids grow up fast. Our youngest is soon moving out, following her brother during next year. I am therefore glad that we have prioritized spending time together the last 20+ years.

After finishing high school, I moved out at the age of 18 to join the military academy where I spent two years. I chose to do that mainly because I wanted to make something extra out

of my mandatory military service of one year. Thereby, I got a leadership education at young age and got to explore and develop myself in ways I would never have done otherwise. Being stationed as a sergeant in Northern Norway I also met my future wife – so it was a fortunate choice in all aspects.

Mette and I moved to Bergen where Mette took a master’s degree in art history and I took a master’s degree in economics and business administration. My studies at Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen was no coincident – it was a choice I had in mind since quite early on from my high school days. I have always been interested in economics – both concerning businesses and societies – and I showed interest in commerce from I was a quite small boy. It could maybe have to do with my grandfather being a tradesman – I do not know.

Anyway, I often found ways of creating small business opportunities when I was young. At around seven I started selling blue clay in my neighborhood that I extracted from a road development site nearby. I went from house to house to offer my services, whether it was painting houses, moving lawns, or other jobs a young boy could manage. Later on, as a teenager, a friend and me spotted an empty space in the nightlife market in my hometown – so we rented a local nightclub and started arranging alcohol free discotheques for teenagers below the age of 18 and further expanded “the business” by arranging parties for students at the teacher’s education college.

My four years in Bergen was as I had expected. I liked the studies and the life as a student. Although I was serious about my studies, I also appreciated the free life as a student, with lots of socializing and student activities. Mette and I lived together in a small apartment and since she studied art history at the University, we were part of two quite different student societies and enjoyed the mix of different people we could thus socialize with. I combined my studies at NHH with parts of an MBA as an exchange student at University of Ottawa, Canada, where I got to know a lot of students from around the world, some of which I still keep in contact with.

When finalizing my studies in 1996, I initially signed up to join a consulting company. However, I ended up accepting an offer from Norsk Hydro (or Hydro for short), a company for whom I had very positive feelings. Partly due to its role as an industrial pioneer and locomotive for developing many of the most important industries in Norway, and partly because of its history in my hometown Notodden, where it was once founded and started its first industrial development back in 1905. Hydro had by 1996 developed into a conglomerate of different industrial businesses – Oil & Gas, Fertilizer, Light Metals, Petrochemicals and Pharmaceuticals to mention a few – all based on energy one way or the other. I got the opportunity to join at the corporate headquarter as an analyst in the planning and strategy department.

For a young professional to get the opportunity to work on large industrial projects and strategies, and to frequently present this in front of the Corporate Management, was a dreamlike start of a professional career. Starting at the corporate center also gave me an excellent view over the then 15 different divisions of the company, to scout for my next, desired step.

I identified the Extrusion division as the possibly most commercially oriented of them all, with a very strong and clear management philosophy of breaking down a global industry into local businesses (“kingdoms”), managed with a large degree of freedom by local MD’s. After three years at the corporate center I got the opportunity to join the Extrusion division as business controller for its Extrusion International business unit and moved with Mette and our then 1-year old son to Lausanne, Switzerland. After some time in that position,

For a young professional to get the opportunity to work on large industrial projects and strategies, and to frequently present this in front of the Corporate Management, was a dreamlike start of a professional career.

Celebrating the 17th of May, the Nathional day in Norway.

I moved sideways to become the business controller of the Building Systems BU, managed out of the same location. It was an adventure to move abroad for a small family – and Mette had if fact lived in Lausanne before, so she knew the city well when we arrived.

My time with the extrusion division gave me exposure to a tough, but fair commercial culture. I learned the importance of running businesses based on an outside-in perspective and of delegating authority for making decisions as close as possible to the customer – in combination with a strongly enforced accountability. I also saw the difference people and management make – in driving through values and building a company culture.

Following a couple of rewarding years with Extrusion we returned as a family back to Oslo in 2002 when I got the opportunity to take on the CFO role of a newly formed midstream business division, Metal Products. Hydro had decided to carve out the cast houses of its upstream division (primary) and downstream divisions (extrusion and rolled products) and to form a mid-stream business aiming at commercializing a process step which other players merely saw as an integrated “support” step in their up– and downstream businesses. Adding metal trading and recycling we made a new business division which created significant value to Hydro, based on an added-value strategy, including commercial services on top of its cast house product portfolio – and building up global leadership positions, with a total turnover of USD five billion. After four years I moved from the CFO position to head one of the business units within the division, my first operational line manager role, in 2006.

Grate Dane, Athene (8) is a great joy to the hole family. Family picture from Nikolas’ gratuation at the University of Oslo.

By then I had really seen the importance of and value from creating unique business models that is adapted to the business you run. In a large company like Hydro one can easily fall into the trap of trying to manage all businesses in the same way. That can be detrimental.

In 2007 I had spent eleven years with Hydro – I was 35 years old and I came to a cross-road where I decided to try out life outside of Hydro when I was offered the position as Group CFO of one of Norway’s largest retail chains, Coop. That was a tough decision to make personally – given my strong ties with Hydro and the opportunities I had been given. Nevertheless, I decided to make the jump – into the unknown. I did not know the retail business, nor the organization, but I knew that if I am to leave Hydro it must be for something very different. It was different. I was lucky to join in a period where major changes were about to be initiated, and I got to play a central role in major restructuring of both the company’s wholesale business and its property business, as well as to lead one of the biggest acquisitions in Coop up until then. Fantastic opportunities to get to know the business and its organization fast. After two years at Coop I felt I had been working there for five – extremely interesting, personally developing and fun! From a very international organization focused on business to business

to a completely Norwegian and very local one focusing on end customers!

Then, in 2009 Hydro got a new CEO. He called me and asked if I would come back to Hydro to take a role in his new management team. I was to get responsibility for the Metal Markets business area, where I earlier had been the CFO. My heart was still beating for Hydro and even if I felt very engaged where I was, it was an offer I could not refuse.

That started my second round of 11-years at Hydro, which consisted purely of line management and operational responsibilities; eight years as head of two of Hydro’s business areas, and in-between those two roles nearly three years as plant manager for an aluminum rolled products plant in Holmestrand, Norway. I was probably the first-ever non-engineer to manage that 100-year old plant, with 400 employees, so there was probably some scepticism when I started, but that soon faded away. I found it extremely motivating to be responsible for a cornerstone company within a small community and with short distance to very competent and engaged employees – enabling me to use and develop yet new sides of myself as a leader. And to see the business flourish and come into a position where it gradually performs better than ever before. I am still in frequent contact with employees there, whom I regard as friends for life.

My last assignment in Hydro was to lead the Rolled Products business area, with approx. 6.000 employees globally, headquartered close to Düsseldorf in Germany. Thus, the family would need to move abroad again – which was an idea that rang well with my then 16-year-old son, who was about to shift to high school anyway, while my 12-year-old daughter was less enthusiastic about it. Nevertheless, we agreed to do it and after half a year alone in Germany my family joined me at the start of the school year of 2015. Following a challenging initial three months also my daughter gradually became more positive to the new life and by the time my family moved back to Norway a year before me in 2018 she did not want to move. The whole family look back at the years in Germany with joy and good memories, and the kids have many friends from around the world today that they will probably bring with them for life. A highlight from my close to five years in Germany was when Bundeskansler Angela Merkel confirmed our invitation to open our newly built automotive product plant in 2017 – something she rarely does. She also shed light on our 100-year anniversary when she came. I remember the CEO of BMW (admittedly my favorite customer, being a long time BMW enthusiast) told us that Merkel had turned down the invitation to join their 100-year anniversary the year before…

I was probably the first-ever nonengineer to manage that 100-year old plant, with 400 employees, so there was probably some skepticism when I started, but that soon faded away.

A highlight from Germany when Bundeskansler Angela Merkel came to open the newly built automotive product plant in 2017.

Having done most of what I could achieve in Hydro I once again thought that if I should do something else, I should consider doing that now. I therefore decided once more to make a leap – and this time I got the opportunity to join DNV as the new Group CFO. That brought me back to my CFO roots, which for me is an excellent platform to learn a new business and organization and a role that I have always enjoyed. I believe Remi wanted to find a CFO which had a broad leadership background and I am very happy that he saw that in me. I started on April 1st, 2020, just after the global lockdowns from Covid19 had started to take effect and it was a start and onboarding very different from what we had planned. I could not travel around to visit our locations and customers, but on the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to learn how my new company works through a crisis and I could bring the experience I have from managing earlier crisis during my career.

DNV has really impressed me, even beyond my high expectations. Not only by the way the Covid-crisis has been managed – but also the general level of competence I see throughout the organization. And, the values and integrity are exactly as strong as I expected before joining, something which to me is very important. Having now been part of developing the DNV strategy for the next five years I am extremely eager to take part in delivering it – and I look forward to the day when we can again travel so that I am able to visit DNV around the world and meet all the people that I have up to now only met on Teams also face to face. I think we have a bright future with lots of opportunities, if we do our things well, living our purpose to the full. That really motivates me! •