NewsmakersDecember 22, 2022

Boogeying Norges Bank: Holiday-Party Goers Celebrate Finances

In video, staffers illustrate investment terms in festive interpretative dance.

Reported by Larry Light

Dancing at workplace holiday parties can be … problematical. Just ask the characters in the TV show “Seinfeld,” who had to endure Elaine’s wretched gyrations on the dance floor.

By contrast, holiday-season partiers who work for Norges Bank Investment Management decided to do a video illustrating financial concepts in short interpretive dance moves. The result is comical and, frankly, endearing. And hey, informative, sorta.

To a driving rock beat, the staffers from NBIM, which invests money derived from North Sea oil and gas for the nation’s $1.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, showed they could both cut a rug and capitalize a risk.

Reminiscent of dance moves on TikTok, CEO Nicolai Tangen portrayed assets and liabilities by alternating palms-up arm raises. A hip-shaking woman demonstrated a pie chart by circling her arm. One fellow interpreted financial technology by mimicking a robot’s stiff movements.

Two men joined elbows and revolved in a circle to suggest a Venn diagram. Two women swooped their arms up and down to show the fever-lines of a multi-line chart. Another person depicted the varying bars of a histogram (tracking distributions of variables) by a jumble of hand motions.

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire danced to classic tunes celebrating passion’s pull. But never to celebrate portfolio performance. NBIM’s hoofers have them there.