André Backen Email & Phone Number

Houston, Texas, United States

Oliasoft develops Oliasoft WellDesign™, a powerful new software tool for drilling engineers and oil professionals. WellDesign™ simplifies your work processes, making data available for every task required for designing Well Trajectories, Casing and Tubing design. Oliasoft WellDesign™ is a cutting edge cloud-based web application with a highly usable interface offering easy access to tools employing algorithms and calculations based on the latest industry research. WellDesign™ includes a powerful manager surveillance system to ensure your wells meet company specific requirements for complex casing and tubing design.http://www.oliasoft.com/

Nor Energy is an independent oil & gas company focused on production and development opportunities in the prolific Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Stavanger Area, Norway

Ocean Rig is an international offshore drilling contractor providing oilfield services for offshore oil and gas exploration, development and production drilling, and specializing in the ultra-deepwater and harsh-environment segment of the offshore drilling industry. The company owns and operates 13 offshore ultra deepwater drilling units, comprising of 2 ultra deepwater semisubmersible drilling rigs and 11 ultra deepwater drillships.I was responsible for the communication with DnB’s offshore division on behalf of Ocean Rig’s USD 650 million loan pledged in the drilling rigs Leiv Eiriksson and Eirk Raude. The bank required quarterly reports with third party market value on the rigs, as well as interest rate notes and daily liquidity monitoring. Each quarter I reported according to US GAAP the value of the swaps for all bank loans Ocean Rig held, USD 2,1 billion, and did the Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) reporting. 2011 was an eventful year for Ocean Rig as it raised USD 500 million high yield bond and listed its stock on Nasdaq.

Oslo Area, Norway

Fearnley Securities’ sector based research teams provide its sales force and institutional clients with a steady stream of research products and actionable investment ideas. The department focuses strongly on offering a global research product with creative and innovative approaches that give its clients added value in their decision-making processes. Fearnley's analysts look at economic, market, industry and company data to enhance the performance of its clients' global portfolios, and help companies set their strategic direction. High Yield Fixed income analysis is the valuation of non-investment grade fixed income or debt securities, and the analysis of their interest rate risk, credit risk, corporate risk, etc. and likely price behaviour. The analyst might conclude to buy, sell, hold, hedge or stay out of the particular security.High Yield Bond holders are usually entitled to coupon payments at periodic intervals until maturity. These coupon payments are generally fixed amounts (quoted as percentage of the bond's face value) or the coupons could float in relation to LIBOR or another reference rate.Following are the typical questions an analyst finds answers for:• Does the real interest rate built into the yield make sense?• Is the real interest rate in line with the earnings growth rate?• Where do we stand in the business cycle of the particular company, or economic cycle of the particular country?• Is there any change expected in the basic real interest rate in the near future?• Do the prevailing monetary and economic conditions force any monetary easing or tightening so that the base real rate will get changed?• Is the inflation condition worsening or improving?• Is the risk premium built into the yield enough to compensate for the risks?• What is the nature and volume of demand for a particular bond?

Funcom was incorporated in March 1993, after a birthday party for me and one of the other founders. The founders were four friends. Today Funcom is one of the leading European independent game developers and publishers. It focuses mainly on PC games, but has released games on several other platforms. From the start I was the CFO and responsible for raising finance, but small companies need attention to all aspects of the organization. Thus, I was involved in setting up the product development department and signing the first contract with a Steven Spielberg offspring project, “A Dinosaurs Tale”.The technology and hardware development drove the game development, in terms of realism, how technologically advanced and complicated they were, and it brought the development costs to new levels.Within two years of incorporation, in 1995 Funcom had grown to about 150 employees and needed dedicated sales and marketing department, as well as HR function and testing department. During my 10 years at Funcom, the company developed 22 titles and signed up contract with amongst Sony, JVC, Disney, Nintendo, Acclaim, SunSoft, Interplay, Coconuts studios in Japan, Midway Games, Tri-Synergy. In 1998 it was decided to develop and publish games and not only develop games. This required strengthening the sales and marketing department and setting up global distribution channels. Initially the distribution channels were DVD sales in stores, but in 2001 Funcom started online distribution. In 2001 online distribution was new and ground breaking. Games Funcom released during my time there: Anarchy Online 2001, No Escape 2000, Championship Motorxross featuring Ricky Charmichael, The Longest Journey1999, Speed Freaks 1999, NBA Hangtime 1997, Casper 1996, Impact Racing 1996, Dragonheart: Fire & Steel 1996, Winter Gold 1996, Nightmare Circus 1996, Disney's Pocahontas 1996, Samurai Shodown 1995, Fatal Fury Special 1995, Daze Before Christmas 1994, A Dinosaur's Tale 1994.

Oslo Area, Norway

Paynet developed the first gateway to accept payments by credit and debit cards in Norway, and the service was launched in 2001. We negotiated agreements with Mastercard, Visa, American Express and JCB prior to launch. As online trade started to become popular in the beginning of the 2000’s there was a huge demand for Paynet’s service. The company was sold to Mastercard and EDB Teamco in 2003, whom sold to Nets. The service is Nets product for acquiring online card transactions.

Troll Tech provided software development platforms and frameworks, as well as expert consulting services. Its flagship product was Qt, a multi-platform Graphical User Interface (GUI) framework written in C++. Qt is popular with application developers using C++ but is supported by bindings for other programming languages too, such as Python. Qt also includes packages such as data structures and a networking library. The popular, Free, and cross-platform KDE Plasma desktop environment and software compilation uses Qt library. The company also employs several KDE developers.In 2001 Trolltech introduced Qtopia which is based on Qt. Qtopia is an application platform for Linux-based devices such as mobile phones, portable media players, and home media. It is also used in many non-consumer products such as medical instruments and industrial devices. Qtopia Phone Edition was released in 2004, and their Greenphone smartphone is based on this platform.