Ola Ström, Chairman of the Board
Chairman of BE Bio Energy Group AG and Impact Investment Partners AG, board member of Solør Bioenergi Holding AS and Solør Bioenergi Eiendom AS
Mr. Ström, Norwegian citizen, has 30 years of international business experience, of which 27 years in executive positions in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Scandinavia. His extensive experience from the corporate world and financial industry, and from advising and managing the assets of wealthy individuals and families helped Mr. Ström understand the forces changing the financial industry and address the consequences in a comprehensive way. Since 2003 Mr. Ström has participated in building a successful bio-energy business in Scandinavia and is a founding partner and Chairman of BE Bio Energy Group AG, Zürich. BE Bio Energy Group focuses on renewable energy production based on biomass in Scandinavia.
He is also a founding partner and Chairman of Impact Investment Partners AG, Schwyz, an investment management group.
Mr. Ström is furthermore Founder, Managing Partner and Chairman of Carlsdorff Partners AG, where his main work is related to advising business owners on corporate, financial and ownership strategy as well as running transaction projects related to mergers & acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, restructuring and financing/refinancing.
Prior to founding Carlsdorff in 1999, Mr. Ström was a senior private banker at Bank Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie (Schweiz) AG where he was responsible for the Scandinavian market. Prior to Oppenheim, he was Head of Private Banking in Luxembourg for Den norske Bank, Norway's leading bank. During the '80s, Mr. Ström was CFO and Member of the Group Executive Board of the Vesta Group (later bought by Swedish Skandia), one of Norway's largest financial groups at that time.
Mr. Ström serves as Chairman or board member for several international and Norwegian companies. He also has been a lecturer in option pricing theory and capital market theory at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo, and lectured at numerous conferences. He has authored and co-authored research papers on option pricing theory, capital market theory and petroleum economics.
Mr. Ström holds an MBE from the Norwegian School of Management, Oslo.
Alex Orus, Member of the Board
Mr. Orus, Swiss and Spanish citizen, is Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Blue Diamond Asset Management, a company within the Impact Investment Partners group, where he is responsible for the overall management of the firm and the development and execution of the investment strategy.
For over 20 years, Alex Orus has worked with institutional and private investors globally to create custom alpha-centric investment solutions. During the last 8 years his focus has been the development of dynamic asset allocation investment strategies for a wide range of sophisticated investors in Europe. Prior to establishing Blue Diamond, Mr. Orus was the managing director of Grantham, Mayo & van Otterloo Co. LLC (GMO) in Europe, where his duties included developing and delivering a broad range of innovative investment strategies to European and Middle Eastern institutional investors.
Before GMO, Mr. Orus was Managing Director of State Street Global Advisors AG, Switzerland, where he successfully introduced and supported a suite of global and domestic equity and fixed income index funds specifically designed to meet the needs of Swiss investors. In addition to his asset management experience, Mr. Orus has substantial experience in the integration of information technologies and financial markets, gained when he was a senior consultant at Andersen Consulting AG (Accenture), Zurich, Switzerland. Mr. Orus serves as a board member for Impact Investment Partners AG, Blue Diamond Asset Management AG and Environmental Alpha AG. Mr. Orus earned his B.A. in Economics from the University of Connecticut, USA.
Martinus Brandal, Member of the Board
Board member and CEO of BE Bio Energy Group AG, Solør Bioenergi Holding AS and Solør Bioenergi Eiendom AS, board member of Impact Investment Partners AG
Mr. Brandal, Norwegian citizen, has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Oslo University College. Martinus brings more than 25 years of industrial experience including 19 years with ABB Group of Switzerland and 6 years with Aker Group of Norway. His skill set varies from sales & marketing to project execution. He has many years experience from operations of companies, where focus has been improvement of business performance and delivering results.
Since 2010, Mr. Brandal is the CEO of a successful bio-energy business in Scandinavia and is a founding partner, board member and CEO of BE Bio Energy Group AG, Zürich. BE Bio Energy Group focuses on renewable energy production based on biomass in Scandinavia.
He is also a founding partner and board member of Impact Investment Partners AG, Schwyz, an investment management group. From 1985 to 2004, Mr. Brandal held various management roles in the ABB Group, such as Project Manager, Section Manager, Department Manager, Division Manager and President of ABB Industry AS in Norway. From 2001 until 2004 Martinus was Group Senior Vice President and Head of various Business Areas at ABB headquarter in Zurich, including Head of Business Area Process Automation, a business with 20.000 employees operating in 50 countries and with a total revenue of 7 Bn USD. He also held the position as Chairman of ABB Norway in a period up to December 2004.
From 2004 to 2010 he held various executive positions in the Aker Group including President & CEO of Aker Solutions (former Aker Kværner) from 2006 to 2008, a business with more than 23.000 employees operating in 30 countries and with an aggregated revenue of 10 Bn USD. Prior to this, Mr. Brandal was Executive Vice President in charge of Operations, Strategy and Business Development at Aker ASA. In this period he was a key resource in launching new businesses such as Aker Drilling and Aker Floating Production, two companies which were listed on Oslo Stock Exchange in 2005 and 2006 respectively. Mr. Brandal had also the position as Chairman of Aker Solutions from April 2008 to April 2009, together with board positions in several of the Aker companies, such as Aker Yards, Aker Seafood, Aker Drilling, Aker Capital, Aker Floating Production from 2004 to 2010.
Morten Kleven, Member of the Board
Board member BE Bio Energy Group AG, Solør Bioenergi Holding AS, Solør Bioenergi Eiendom AS, Impact Investment Partners AG.
Since 2003 Mr Kleven, Norwegian citizen, has participated in building a successful bio-energy business in Scandinavia and is a founding partner and board member of BE Bio Energy group. BE Bio Energy focuses on renewable energy production based on Biomass in Scandinavia.
He is also a founding partner and board member of Impact Investment Partners AG, Schwyz, an investment management group. Mr. Kleven is also Managing Partner and Board Member of Carlsdorff Partners, where his main focus is on business development, strategic consulting and corporate advisory work related to transactions including mergers & acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, restructuring and capital raising. Prior to joining Carlsdorff in 2003, Mr. Kleven held numerous senior positions in the investment management industry.
From 1995-2000, he was Managing Director of BT&T AG (Zurich) where his responsibilities included global marketing, fundraising and investor relations, specifically with regard to the so-called TIME sector (Telecom, Information, Media & Entertainment). Mr. Kleven successfully completed 11 public capital increases / share issues in the five years until July 2000, raising a total of CHF 1.25 billion, as well as successfully completing several private placements. At the peak in 2000, the valuation of the company exceeded CHF 3.2 billion.
From 1993-1995, he was the Manager of the Alusuisse-Lonza AG pension fund. While there, he restructured the entire pension fund's CHF 1.3 billion investment portfolio and directly managed a cash and securities portfolio of CHF 600 million. In 1990, he worked at Credit Suisse in Zürich in investment research, specializing in Nordic fixed income securities, providing guidance to the bank's traders and client advisors.
Mr. Kleven is a board member of Right to Play, Switzerland, an international humanitarian organization.
Mr. Kleven holds a degree in Business Administration (lic.rer.pol) from Fribourg University, Switzerland, and also a Swiss Federal Diploma as Financial Analyst and Asset Manager, Certified International Investment Analyst (CIIA).
