About us

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Member of the Board of Directors

Bjarne Graven Larsen is a pension fund and financial veteran with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. He is the former Chief Investment Officer and executive board member of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated pension plans, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. From 1999 to 2011, Bjarne was the Chief Investment Officer and executive board member of ATP, Denmark’s largest and Europe’s fourth largest pension fund. Before joining OTPP, Bjarne was CFO at Novo A/S and prior to that he was the CEO of FIH Erhvervsbank A/S (FIH). Bjarne has also held positions at Realkredit Denmark, the country's largest Mortgage Bank, now part of Danske Bank, in Denmark's Central Bank, and in the Ministry of Finance.

Chairman of the Board of Directors

JP has more than 35 years of experience in the financial sector. For more than 20 years JP worked for Danske Bank in various positions all over the world, including Global Head of Markets and Global head of International Banking. During his career, JP has held a range of Board positions, and he served as deputy chairman of the International Capital Markets Association. Currently, he is partner at the Copenhagen based family office Leschly & Neergaard International. JP holds a Degree in International Business from Copenhagen Business School as well as Advanced Management qualifications from prominent business schools in Europe and the U.S.A., including INSEAD and Harvard.

Member of the Board of Directors

Lotte has worked in the financial sector for more than 30 years. She has been Managing Partner in a Danish consulting firm in the capital markets area and has also worked at “Big Four” in the Financial Services & Risk Management team. Prior to this, Lotte was Executive Director for Asset Management & Tax at a financial branch association. Previous work experience includes the Ministry of Economy, Denmark’s central bank and the Danish EU representation in Brussels. During her career, Lotte has participated in the preparation of financial legislation, such as the implementation of EU regulation in the Danish legislation, and she has expert knowledge within the area of financial regulation, risk management, compliance, corporate governance and capital market affairs. Lotte holds a Master of Law from the University of Copenhagen as well as an MBA in Professional Communication from Roskilde University.

Partner & Chief Legal Officer

Anders Lavesen has many years of experience as a lawyer. He spent more than 25 years as equity partner with Kromann Reumert, a leading Danish law firm. Anders has acted as managing partner and chairman of the board of directors with Kromann Reumert. Anders has profound experience within corporate, commercial, and regulatory law and has assisted clients ranging from the largest financial institutions, big corporates, private equity funds, other alternative investment funds, partnership-owned consultancy companies and international IT and tele businesses. Since its establishment and until joining Qblue Balanced in October 2023, Anders acted as outside counsel for Qblue Balanced. Also prior to Qblue Balanced, Anders Lavesen has in various settings worked together with Bjarne Graven Larsen and other members of the Qblue team.

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Member of the Board of Directors

Bjarne Graven Larsen is a pension fund and financial veteran with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. He is the former Chief Investment Officer and executive board member of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated pension plans, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. From 1999 to 2011, Bjarne was the Chief Investment Officer and executive board member of ATP, Denmark’s largest and Europe’s fourth largest pension fund. Before joining OTPP, Bjarne was CFO at Novo A/S and prior to that he was the CEO of FIH Erhvervsbank A/S (FIH). Bjarne has also held positions at Realkredit Denmark, the country's largest Mortgage Bank, now part of Danske Bank, in Denmark's Central Bank, and in the Ministry of Finance.

Chief Commercial Officer

Tine has more than 20 years of experience in the financial sector in various positions such as Head of Investor relations and sustainability at Jyske Bank, Member of the Executive management, International Banking at Danske Bank, Sales Director PFA Asset management, Senior sales manager at Nordea Markets. Tine started her career as trainee at A.P. Moller Maersk and worked there for 8 years. Tine holds a Graduate Diploma in Finance, a Graduate Diploma in Accounting & Credit Risk and an Executive MBA from IMD.

Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer

Fredrik Martinsson has many years of experience within the financial industry. He spent 15 years at ATP, the last five years of which as CIO Investments. During this period, Fredrik was responsible, among other things, for building, developing, and implementing ATP’s proprietary Alternative Risk Premia (ARP) program across assets and internal teams. During the period 2005-2011, under the leadership of Bjarne Graven Larsen, Fredrik was responsible for building, developing, and manage ATP Alpha, ATP’s multi-team and multi-asset in-house alpha operation. Fredrik joined ATP in 2001 as an equity portfolio manager and was promoted by Bjarne Graven Larsen in 2004 to become Head of Equities. Prior to ATP, Fredrik was an equity analyst for almost 10 years, working for Danske Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Hagströmer & Qviberg.

Head of Operations

Andreas spent 8 years working at ATP as Senior Operations Manager, being responsible for the overall back office and working to optimize transaction management and enhance operation processes. Furthermore, Andreas has been instrumental in the implementation of a new clearing platform, focusing on trading derivatives and commodities with multiple counterparts, markets and clearing brokers. Prior to joining ATP, Andreas worked for Nordea in Copenhagen and as Product Manager for Citigroup in London, where he managed the Nordic product portfolio with responsibility to grow revenue as well as lead the regional strategy and product development. Andreas holds a Degree in Business Administration in Finance from the European School of Economics in London.

Financial Data Engineer

Christian is a financial data engineer working in Technology and Risk, helping Qblue build a robust data infrastructure. Christian has previously worked for two years as risk analyst at ATP. He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics-Economics and a M.Sc. in Statistics from the University of Copenhagen. Christian also holds a B.Sc. in International Business from Copenhagen Business School.

Sustainability Manager

Before becoming Sustainability manager at Qblue Balanced, Filippa has worked as a Data Analyst at Warner Bros Discovery in their Nordic Research department. Filippa was responsible for automatization of estimation of advertising viewing and alignment of research processes across platforms for the Nordic countries. Additionally, she holds an M. Sc. in Business Administration and Mathematical Business Economics with focus on programming, statistics and computational finance.  Filippa wrote her Master thesis within the subject of ESG investments.

Operations Manager

Prior to joining Qblue Balanced as an Operation Manager, Jonas has been working as a Junior Business Developer at Jyske Bank and subsequently as an Analyst at J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Copenhagen, covering a Nordic client base. Jonas holds an M.Sc. in Economics from Aarhus University and a B.Sc. in Economics from Aalborg University.

Finance and Compliance Manager

Prior to joining Qblue Balanced, Julie spent a few years in Spain working for Mærsk as a Custom and Manifest agent, responsible for monitoring and controlling import and export procedures and ensuring compliance with Spanish and international maritime legislation. Julie holds a M.Sc. in Business & Development Studies from Copenhagen Business School.

Co-Founder & Head of Technology and Risk

Kevin Mitchell is Head of Technology and Risk at Qblue Balanced, where he leads a team responsible for maintaining and enhancing the company's technology infrastructure. The team also plays a pivotal role in monitoring and managing the risk across the funds managed by Qblue Balanced. Kevin is a member of both the Investment Committee and the Sustainability Committee. Kevin holds an M.Sc. in Business Administration and Mathematical Business Economics, graduating at the top of his class from Copenhagen Business School in 2017. He also works as a part-time instructor in Probability Theory and Statistics at the same institution.

Data Analyst

Kristian G. Hansen is an analyst at Qblue Balanced where he assists with the development and maintenance of our data and reporting platforms in the Data and Technology department. Kristian is studying Data Science at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Co-Founder & Senior Portfolio Manager

Lars Hougaard Nielsen is responsible for Fixed Income and Commodities at Qblue Balanced. He is also a member of Qblue’s Sustainability Committee with sustainable finance regulation as his primary responsibility. Before co-founding Qblue, he worked for 10 years in the financial industry, including 6 years as Portfolio Manager at the Danish pension fund, ATP. Lars holds an M.Sc. in mathematical statistics, and a Ph.D. in applied statistics, from the University of Copenhagen.

Co-Founder & Senior Portfolio Manager

Lars worked for four years as senior portfolio manager at ATP, being responsible for the development and management of purely systematic alternative risk premia strategies in equities, both long/short and long only with special focus on efficient and low-impact market implementation. Previously, from 2009 to 2013, Lars was portfolio manager at ATP Alpha, developing and implementing systematic long/short alpha strategies in equities. Additionally, Lars has 15 years of experience from the software industry, both as consultant, technical architect and software developer. Lars holds an M.Sc. In computer science from the Technical University of Denmark.

Co-Founder & Senior Portfolio Manager

Martin spent five years at ATP Alpha as Senior Portfolio Manager, developing and implementing a portfolio of quantitative FX trading strategies and risk management systems for both systematic and discretionary trading. From 2013 to 2016 Martin served as quantitative strategist at Nordea Markets. Prior to joining ATP Martin spent five years as Senior Analyst at Danske Markets. From 2003 to 2008 he was senior analyst at Danske Markets. Martin has a Ph.D. in Finance from Copenhagen Business School, an M.Sc. in Statistics and B.Sc. in Mathematics from University of Copenhagen.

Senior Portfolio Manager

Michael Sandfort has three decades of experience in the financial industry. He spent thirteen years as an Equity Analyst and five years as a Credit Analyst in Danske Bank, Nordea, DNB and Carnegie. Also, for twelve years Michael was Credit Portfolio Manager in Sparinvest and Nykredit. He has served on multiple boards. Michael holds a Master of Science in Finance and Business Strategy from Copenhagen Business School and from the CFA Institute he holds the CFA designation and the Certificate in ESG Investing.

Financial Software Engineer

Sebastian holds an M.Sc. in Business Administration and Mathematical Business Economics focusing on programming, statistics and computational finance. Before joining Qblue Balanced as a Financial Software Engineer, he taught Numerical analysis and computer science as an instructor at Copenhagen Business School. Besides, he has been in charge of developing business intelligence solutions concerning inventory management and managerial economics for the wholesale distributor Nordic Distribution.

Sales and Relationship Manager

Prior to joining Qblue Balanced as a Sales & Relationship Manager, Nicolai started his career at Mærsk Broker. Following his time at Mærsk Broker, Nicolai worked at Saxo Bank in the CEO-office, where he provided essential support to the CEO and the Executive Team, and he was also involved as a member of the M&A integration projects. Before joining the CEO-office, he worked in Saxo Bank's Global Sales department. Nicolai also brings with him eight years of experience living in Hamburg, Germany, and holds an M.Sc. in Business & Development Studies with a minor in Digital Business Development from Copenhagen Business School.

Co-Founder & Senior Portfolio Manager

Thomas served four years as senior portfolio manager in Global Equities and Volatility team at ATP. In this position he worked with designing, implementing and managing systematic equity risk premia strategies. As part of this work he designed and implemented a proprietary risk model for performance attribution and risk factor exposure monitoring. Thomas was also portfolio manager at ATP Alpha developing and trading a portfolio of global long/short equity quant alpha strategies. Before that, Thomas worked for 15 years in the software industry as a consultant, manager, and system developer. Thomas holds an M.Sc. In Engineering (Computer science) from the Technical University of Denmark.