Svein Stole

Former business journalist Svein Støle is the owner of Pareto Group, a financial services conglomerate.

The company provides financing, research and asset-management services to such clients as foundations, pension funds and high-net-worth individuals.

Through Pareto's shipping arm it also manages tankers, dry bulk ships and drilling rigs.

Støle worked as a journalist for Norwegian business publication Kapital before taking a job as an analyst at an investment bank in 1987.

In 1992 he and a group of investors bought Pareto, then a small project finance and securities outfit of bankrupt Oslobanken.