– I was lucky as a pig – E24

– Sorry! There is something wrong with my calendar.

Jan Petter Sissener’s receptionist has served E24 coffee and cookies, and has had time for in-depth discussions about office art, interior, and the quality of Sissener paper-wrapped drops. Because Sissener himself is in a completely different meeting: a technical failure has brought us down.

Once we are all in place, we will be guided further into the office space. In his own company, Sissener As, which among other things owns the Canopus working capital fund, the boss himself sits in an open landscape, behind a giant curved screen.

– It did not support so many screens, explains Sissener about the somewhat unusual curved device, which shows constantly updated stock information.

Law in french

Today, Sissener is perhaps one of Norway’s best-known managers, with a long career in the financial industry and a series of ups and downs in his luggage.

But that wasn’t always the plan, he says on this week’s episode of E24’s Voksenpoeng podcast. After high school, he studied law. In Switzerland. In French.

– He didn’t know French and he didn’t know Latin. It’s probably the worst advice I’ve ever received, that it should be possible to study law in a language you couldn’t, says Sissener.

It was his father, who was also a lawyer in Switzerland, who wanted to study law for his son, so that he could finally replace him. It was a year, followed by the army, and then a new year of law studies.

Actually, it was economics that I wanted to study.

– But I let myself fight with a strong desire from my father. It was completely useless. I am a spokesperson, there are numbers that I can.

At least she got some knowledge of French with him, before the trip she went back to Norway and got a master’s in economics, or a diploma in economics, as it was called at the time, in BI. The idea was to complete, and if something changed in his career, it would be to complete. But the part-time job he took towards the end of his studies turned out to be more like a position and a half. Some exams failed, but he took the diploma thesis.

Started in stock club

She had an interest in shares with him since her youth. Sissener, 14, had a stock club with his friends.

– During gymnastics, everyone entered different oil companies. I made a lot of money by going with all my classmates and asking their parents if they planned to extract what was called Norwegian oil. The aunt drew gigantic, and at that time she made a fortune for me: it was not more than 10-20,000 crowns, but I promise you 20,000 crowns for a 17-year-old boy at that time was a lot of money, says Sissener.

Browse the photo gallery to read Jan Petter Sissen’s school journal.

His interest in stocks led him to a brokerage firm, which was later acquired by Alfred Berg. Then he was kicked out of the stock market – the then-stock exchange commissioner thought Sissener had sold Viking Askim shares to a client earlier than allowed. The decision was later withdrawn, but by then Sissener had already gotten started at Carnegie in London.

– I was probably the first to lose the right to represent Alfred Berg on the Oslo Stock Exchange. It was pretty tough. Fortunately, the children were small, so they didn’t really understand what was going on.

Both Carnegie and customers still believed that Sissener had done nothing wrong before it came from official sources. After many years, he was sent back to Norway to start Carnegie’s Norwegian branch. A series of banking jobs followed, including at Enskilda and Kaupthing.

– Pig luck

At Kaupthing, he spotted some red flags in the annual report and advised clients to take their money and leave.

– They didn’t think anything of that. Then they said we were at a crossroads: I had a global role, so I didn’t know if what they meant was that they would send me back to Oslo or if they would get rid of me. But I took it as if I had been fired and went there, says Sissener.

– Then I had burned my fingers on Alfred Berg and Kaupthing. It wasn’t the case that the best jobs in the brokerage world were waiting for Jan Petter, he continues.

– Why did they think you were a loose cannon?

– Yes, maybe, but it was probably more than those positions were filled.

The solution was to start Sissener AS and manage it yourself. Many old clients followed. He himself believes that his success is linked to a burning desire to make money for clients and luck.

– Well, I was lucky as a pig. During the period when I started in the brokerage world, the stock market took off. The commissions were 0.75 percentage points in each direction; today they are just 0.02 percent. So it was absolutely adventurous.

– Before it was easier to do well on the stock market?

– Easier. It was easier to be a runner, because today there are completely different requirements. Our counterparts on the purchasing side also did not have the same experience as they do today. Then there has been a lot more math management or index management, and a lot less investing, says Sissener.

He advises those who want to enter the brokerage industry now to take a few years as an analyst first, to gain insight and experience that not all brokers have.

– You have to be willing to work really hard. Markets never close and change continuously, they struggle to analyze companies. If you go to the brokerage side, I would specialize in a small group of companies or sectors, rather than trying to cover everything. It is not easy to be an “expert in all trades” and a “master of none”.

Hear the full interview on E24’s Voksenpoeng podcast.