Norges Bank Investment Management, the manager of the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, has appointed Alex Knapp to be its next global head of real estate.
Knapp: his appointment by NBIM concludes a six-month search
He joins from Houston-based manager Hines where he was chief investment officer for Europe.
The hire was announced today. He is due to start in the position on June 16. His appointment closes a more than six-month search, during which candidates from all over the world were understood to have either applied or been approached.
He becomes the fourth incumbent in the role since the establishment of a real estate strategy at the state fund in 2007. Paul Golding was appointed first before he was succeeded by Karsten Kallevig and Mie Caroline Holstad, the latter leaving in November last year.
In a notable change from Holstad’s role, which oversaw a wider real assets strategy, Knapp’s mandate is expected to focus only on real estate. That change brings the remit closer to the responsibilities previously held by Golding and Kallevig. Notably, it will include both listed and private assets.
In another departure, from a previous expectation to be based in Oslo, the role was this time advertised to be based in London in a bid to attract as wide a talent pool as possible. Other gateway cities would have been considered, PERE understands. However, Knapp’s appointment means London ultimately prevailed as the next base for NBIM’s real estate leadership.
It is a city where the state fund has made some of its highest profile outlays, including in a £305.7 million ($407 million; €360 million) all-equity investment 25 percent ownership of a 2.3-million-square-foot mixed-used portfolio sold by London-based manager Grosvenor in January.
More broadly, Knapp joins NBIM at a time of relatively higher activity for its real estate strategy. In 2024, the state fund quadrupled its year-on-year deployment in the asset class.
The Oslo-based investor, which manages Norway’s NKr19.75 trillion ($1.76 trillion, €1.69 trillion) sovereign wealth fund, invested in nearly $3.5 billion of unlisted real estate last year, according to its annual report, up from roughly $900 million in 2023.
The deployments, made through a series of joint ventures and direct investments, came even as NBIM’s unlisted portfolio returned -0.6 percent for the year, its second consecutive annual loss.
PERE understands Knapp’s brief includes improving on that performance while also growing NBIM’s exposure from the asset class from its current approximately 4 percent of total assets.
That sees NBIM currently sit 20th on PERE’s Global Investor 100 ranking based on investing $29 billion of equity in private real estate.
At Hines, in addition to serving as CIO for Europe, Knapp sat on its investment committee. His move brings down the curtain on a 17-year period with the company. His duties at Hines are expected to be assumed by the firm’s other CIOs, US-focused Alfonso Munk and Asia-Pacific-focused Chiang Ling Ng.