Our Team
Tor A. Svelland
Founder & Chief Investment Officer
36 years of commodities, shipping and portfolio management experience
Founder Tor A. Svelland has over 30 years’ of extensive experience within commodity, equity, freight derivatives and physical trading.
From 2014 to 2016 Tor was the Desk Manager of the dry cargo freight desk, at Trafigura in Geneva, where he was responsible for all physical commodity, commodity derivative and commodity/freight-related-equity trading.
From 2010 to 2014, Tor was an Executive Director of the Oil Desk at Goldman Sachs in London, responsible for the global freight book.
Between 2005 and 2010, Tor was Head of Commodities and Head of Freight Derivatives at Carnegie and Pareto in Oslo. From 1989 to 2005, Tor held various positions within commodity and freight markets across shipping merchants, brokers and charterers, in Athens and Oslo.
Andreas Mattsson
Portfolio Advisor
29 years of commodities trading and risk management experience
Before joining Svelland Capital, Andreas worked on the oil derivatives desk at Trafigura, where he traded options, swaps, and futures on crude oil and all oil products. As well as proprietary trading and futures execution, he worked closely with the physical oil trading desks to monetize physical oil contracts using derivatives.
From 2005 to 2009, Andreas worked on the oil options desk at Morgan Stanley. He managed the options book for Asian and European oil products and exotic options on all oil products.
From 2001 to 2005, Andreas worked for Shell International Trading and Shipping, where he was a proprietary trader and an OTC market-marker on oil options
Ara Levonian
Portfolio Manager
28 years of investment and portfolio management experience
Mr Levonian has over 20 years’ experience from both the buy-side and sell-side of financial markets.
Before joining Svelland Capital, Mr Levonian worked as a sales trader at BGC Partners covering cross asset listed derivatives and equites, whilst offering market commentary and actionable trade ideas for institutional clients. And before this as a broker for Vantages Derivatives.
From 2000 until 2013 he worked at GLC Ltd, a quantitative and macro hedge fund, where he traded FX, listed derivatives and equites for both CTA and proprietary strategies.
Mr Levonian started his career in the compliance and equity products department at derivatives broker GNI Ltd in 1997.
Henrik Seland
Head of Research
37 years of corporate finance, advisory and research experience
Before joining Svelland, Henrik worked for The Sahara Forest Project AS as Finance Manager (2013-2016). Prior to this, (2011 to 2013) Henrik was CEO at Agilis Group and previously Executive Director in Corporate Finance for Alegro Capital that was sold to Agiliis. Henrik joined Alegro in 2005.
From 2003 to 2005 Henrik worked within Corporate Finance and M&A for Tallenk and previous to this, was a Partner in the Corporate Finance department for Hartmark Consulting AS. Henrik was also a Partner at Pareto Fonds AS (1997-1998). Before joining Pareto, from 1993-1997, Henrik was a Partner for ABG Sundal Collier Securities and a Director of Institutional Clients in the Advisory team from 1990 to 1993 for Delphi Economics AS.
Henrik started his career in 1988 with TEKAB A/S Aktiv Aksjeradgivning progressing to Director and Portfolio Manager.
Nadia Martin Wiggen
Director (Research & Marketing)
18 years of commodity market research, investment, sales and client relationship experience
Nadia joined Svelland Capital in September 2023. Nadia joins from Pareto Securities where she was a Partner for 5 years within Energy and Commodities. Nadia was responsible for generating energy market reports, oil price forecasting for equity research coverage, selling energy market views to investors, companies and boards, offering hedging advisory services, contributing to origination deals, and was a frequent guest on Bloomberg TV.
From 2015 to 2018, Nadia was Senior Vice President at Rystad Energy where she managed the Markets Team (oil, gas and renewables) and co-developed OilMarketCube, a commercial database of monthly crude production.
From 2009-2015, Nadia was a Commodity Analyst at Phibro where she built and maintained databases and econometrics-based refinery margin models, developed market views and trade ideas for traders worldwide, and fostered relationships with paper and physical traders, hedge funds, bankers and analysts.
Nadia joined Morgan Stanley’s Commodity desk in London from 2007 to 2009 after acquiring her MSc degree at Stockholm School of Economics. She has a BSc from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Pål Sundsøy
Head of Data Science
20 years of applying quantitative science to investment management, portfolio construction and risk management
Prior to joining Svelland Capital in February 2025, Pål was a Portfolio Manager at a family office, where he focused on quantitative approaches to stock selection and portfolio construction. From 2016 to 2023, he served as Lead Portfolio Manager and Lead Researcher at Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), where he developed sophisticated investment strategies and advanced risk management frameworks for large-scale equity portfolios. Earlier in his career (2007-2016), Pål worked as a Senior Data Scientist in the Big Data & AI research team at Telenor Global Markets. Pål holds a Dr.Philos in Data Science from the University of Oslo (UiO), an MBA in Finance from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), and an MSc in Physics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
David O'Connor
Chief Financial Officer
>25 years of financial accounting, control and reporting experience
David O’Connor joined Svelland Capital as Chief Financial Officer in January 2024. David is a Chartered Accountant and a member of the ICAEW and CA ANZ, having qualified with PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers) in Australia.
Prior to joining Svelland Capital, David has held various senior Finance positions with Alta Trading UK Limited (formerly Arcadia Petroleum Limited) as Group Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director from 2021 to 2023; Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) from 2010 to 2019, including as Chief Financial Officer, Asia based in Hong Kong between 2013 and 2019; and Goldman Sachs within their EMEA Controllers Division (Equities Derivatives and Physical Commodities) from 2006 to 2010.
Lars Kristoffersen
Chief Operating Officer
21 years of Operations and Risk Management experience
Before joining Mr Svelland in launching Svelland Capital in 2016, Lars worked within Credit Suisse’ Prime Finance department on the Client Service desk in London from 2015 to 2016. Previously, from 2013-2016 Lars was Head of Fund and TPM Operations for CITE Investments. Lars worked for Glider Trading prior to CITE investment (2011-2012), a small commodity trading firm, as Head of Operations responsible for setting up the trading operation.
From 2005 to 2011, Lars worked for Goldman Sachs in London, where he covered various Operations roles, primarily focused on supporting the Equity and Structured Volatility desk and Prime Brokerage Synthetic business. Lars started his career in 2004 with Royal Bank of Scotland in the Bank’s Complex Processing Unit.
Chris Menzies
Head of Investor Relations & Marketing
18 years of commodity market investment, sales and client relationship experience
Chris joined Svelland Capital from TP ICAP where he worked as Head of Energy & Commodities Hedge Fund Sales since 2017. In this role Chris onboarded and executed fund client business across commodities, with a particular focus on bulk and metal products. Prior to this position, Chris worked to set up and launch ICAPs dry freight derivatives broking desk and establish their iron ore and coking coal derivatives offering (2012-2016).
Chris began his career in 2007 at Goldman Sachs, London, spending 5 years providing risk management support to the commodities trading desks (with a focus on freight products). He also assisted in the build out of the firm’s broader commodities client electronic trading offering. Chris was awarded a BSc from Durham University and holds the IMC.
Andrew Trowbridge
General Counsel
25 years of financial services legal experience
Andrew joined Svelland Capital in November 2024 with 25 years’ experience as a financial services lawyer advising across the buy and sell side at hedge funds, investment banks, fintech and private practice at Simmons & Simmons. Andrew was Associate General Counsel at Arrowgrass Capital from 2014 to 2020.
Andrew has a BA in Politics from Durham University, a postgraduate degree in Law from the University of Law, and a Masters in Classics from Oriel college Oxford University.
Guillaume Salomon
Head of Physical Gold ETC Distribution
Over 25 years of financial market experience. 4 years at Edmond de Rothschild developing the physical gold ETC
Guillaume joined Svelland Capital in May 2024 from Edmond de Rothschild (EDR) where he worked for the FX and Precious Metals team for 4 years. In his role, Guillaume had the responsibility for the development of alternative investment solutions within the space of FX and Precious Metals. As part of this role, Guillaume was central to the creation of the Gold ETC, which was the result of the partnership between Svelland and EDR.
Guillaume has over 25 years experience in the financial industry, working both on the sell side for institutions likes JP Morgan and UBS, and the buy side working for the Carlyle Group and BTG Pactual. Guillaume was awarded a BSc from Strathclyde University, followed by an MSc in Numerical Modelling from Oxford University and an MBA from Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) in Paris.