An Excel error caused a Norwegian fund to lose $86 million

Error is human, but sometimes these mistakes can mean a big loss. This is the case for an employee Norwegian sovereign wealth fund NBIM (Norwegian Bank Investment Management) causing a loss to the fund Nearly 86 million euros due to an error in excel fields. According to what the employee said Financial Timesput some data in an incorrect cell resulting in An error in calculating the index by which the Norwegian sovereign fund measures its performance.

Initially, Fund A Revenue: 118 billion Norwegian kronerBut due to failure it became 982 million kroner less, about 86 million euros. This error remained for several months, until The Norwegian Ministry of Finance alerted NBIM that its accounts were unbalanced.

When they saw the error, the fund's CEO said, Nikolai TanginHe admitted this mistake before the Norwegian Parliament: “In February of this year (2023), A mathematical error has been discovered in the composition of the indicator by which we measure ourselves. This error resulted in a marginal increase in US fixed income compared to global fixed income.

The employee singsMiddle East and Africa neglect“

In his statements to Financial TimesThe employee claims that the error was his, after reviewing all the movements he made. “It was a manual error. My mistake. You used the wrong date, December 1, instead of November 1“, admits the employee. Like the employee, Patrick du Plessissaid Global Head of Risk Monitoring at NBIM “Physically ill” when he was informed of the error.

Although the failure was very serious and cost them Tens of millions of euros, and the employee did not lose his jobOn the contrary, Tangen himself asserted that “These things happen! We carry out a complex process What surprises me most is that historically we have seen very few, if any, such incidents (…) Don't let this ruin your weekend.