Nicolai Tangen is used to turning heads in his native Norway. Several years ago, when he was a successful hedge fund manager in London, he arrived at the weekly regatta in a millionaires’ playground in the south of the country in a shiny modernised vessel that put the other shabby chic boats in the shade.

“Everybody else turns up in fairly ordinary boats but Nicolai’s looked like he’d spent a lot of money on it,” said one onlooker in Blindleia, perhaps Norway’s most exclusive area for summer cabins. Asked about it today, Tangen laughs: “I have to admit: I did buy an old boat, and we did tune it up quite a lot. We may have over-tuned it a bit.”

Financial Times