Yngve Slyngstad: ignore Brexit and carry on

Yngve Slyngstad, who runs Norway’s $1trn investment fund, says investors should pay scant attention to Brexit headlines and think instead of the very long-term.

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Ignore all the noise

Yngve Slyngstad, (pictured, below right), may not be the best-known money manager, but he is one of the biggest players in the market. He has been running Norway's $1trn sovereign wealth fund, which owns nearly 1.5% of global equities, since 2008.

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(Image credit: 2008 AFP)

"If we look past this ten, 20, 30 years the UK will be an important economy in Europe, and it will remain in Europe. We expect business on that timeline to develop positively no matter what the outcome." In the long run, he notes, "the big driver of the economy and of our... results is development in technology more than political decisions".

So what does he look at? He is not overly worried about trade ("the Chinese economy and the US... are very intertwined"), but he adds that "what moves the markets today is to a large extent either events in the US or... China... these are two markets that you just have to pay very close attention to".

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He is more troubled by the trend for fast-growing firms such as ride-hailing app Uber to stay private. "It's in everyone's interest that we have a mechanism to have large companies... being governed and having ownership change between different participants... How do we get stock exchanges to realise... an important part of their role is to make it attractive to be a listed company?"