Oslo Business Forum, one of the largest and most prominent business conferences in Norway, has been partly acquired by the conference giant Nordic Business Forum. The aim of this merger is to contribute to Oslo Business Forum’s future growth and development.
Oslo Business Forum and its founders Christoffer Omberg and Marius Røed Wang welcome Nordic Business Forum as co-owners with a 30 percent ownership. Oslo Business Forum is known for bringing together thousands of business leaders and world renowned speakers such as President Barack Obama, Sir Alex Ferguson and Werner Vogels.
“Oslo Business Forum is little to be so big. Similarly to how we challenge our participants to challenge the status quo, we now take our own medicine. By including Nordic Business Forum as a co-owner, we will get access to competence, structure, and opportunities that will elevate Oslo Business Forum to a whole new level. It will be truly fantastic for us,” says Christoffer Omberg, CEO of Oslo Business Forum.
Nordic Business Forum was established in 2010 and attracts 10,000 participants to its annual conferences in Helsinki, Stockholm, and Oslo. The latter will, in the future, be merged with Oslo Business Forum, which has its next conference on September 25th, 2019, with the former UK Prime Minister David Cameron as the headliner.
“We have been closely following Oslo Business Forum’s young team and have been very impressed with their rapid growth to one of the largest and most prominent arenas for the Norwegian business sector. With our ten years of experience in building and organizing business conferences, we believe we can contribute to Oslo Business Forum’s future growth and development. We expect this cooperation to benefit both of our operations. There is surely a lot we can also learn from Oslo Business Forum. In the future, we will be working together on the speaker recruitment and marketing,” says Hans-Peter Siefen, co-founder and chairman of Nordic Business Forum.
Nordic Business Forum acquired 30 percent of the shares of Walkover AS, the company that operates the Oslo Business Forum. The founders Christoffer Omberg and Marius Røed Wang will continue as main owners with a combined ownership of almost 70 percent of the shares.
In addition to the new owners, Oslo Business Forum has recruited two new external board members: Anniken Fjelberg, founder of several companies within marketing, communications, design, and entrepreneurship, and Tor Haugnes, lecturer and head of the entrepreneurship studies at the BI Norwegian Business School.
“We are proud to have the well-established Nordic Business Forum and competent new board members to join our growing team. They all will play an important role in developing our operations and help us deliver even better experiences and insights to our audiences in the future,” Omberg comments.
The parties have agreed not to disclose the closing price of the share acquisition.