Bringing the industry together to navigate a new ocean business reality

How can the industry navigate change while staying on course to achieve business, operational and environmental ambitions? Jan Ole Huseby, Global Head of Ocean Industries at DNB, argues that insight, flexibility and consistency are essential, while outlining the need for a new form of broad-based dialogue.

“Well, it’s not getting any less complex, is it?”

Jan Ole Huseby, DNB’s Global Head of Ocean Industries for the past six years, is ruminating on the convergence of geopolitical upheaval, technological change, market uncertainty, and the drive to be more energy efficient.

Any one of those individual elements, he stresses, poses challenges for modern shipping and ocean businesses. When taken on board at the same time, even the strongest operators may feel ready to capsize.

“And that’s why, as an industry, we need to come together,” Huseby states.

“There’s a real necessity for an ongoing, broad dialogue that lays the foundations for wider cooperation across the entire value chain. No one has the capacity to solve challenges of such magnitude alone… or, for that matter, to fully realise the business opportunities they may create. So we have to address these issues together.

“And that,” he adds with commitment, “is why there’s such a strong case for a gathering like Oslo Ocean Days.”

Privileged position

Oslo Ocean Days is a new breed of ocean industry event for a new age of development. Held across Oslo city centre venues on 8-10 September 2026, it aims to bring together industry leaders, investors and policymakers around the fast-moving topics highlighted by Huseby (and many more), while providing a fresh space for insight, dialogue and international networking.

Participants will represent the highest levels of industry, with discussions designed to deliver impacts far beyond the waters of the Oslo fjord.

Huseby describes the Norwegian capital as the “perfect location” for such an initiative, given both its fully integrated maritime cluster and its standing with “stakeholders of genuine understanding and authority”.

Not least in the financial and investment fold.

“We’re very lucky here,” he begins, before correcting himself. “In fact, luck has got nothing to do with it. We’re very privileged here to have an incredibly strong investor base that knows the industry inside out, alongside one of the industry’s leading bond markets. That provides fertile ground for growth.”

DNB has certainly blossomed in recent times, consistently holding a position near the very top of performance tables relating to shipping, offshore and other key ocean industry segments (including aquaculture and renewables).

Huseby is, however, anything but complacent.

Consistency is key

“Competition in the financial markets is arguably fiercer than ever,” he says. “Certain shipping markets have been strong for sustained periods of time, creating surplus liquidity and encouraging many owners to reduce debt. There are also new flows of capital – a kind of hybrid financing – entering the picture as a result of that liquidity. That includes direct lending structures from novel lending sources that have a different kind of risk appetite to more traditional banks.”

That, he notes, in addition to the previously mentioned (largely geopolitical) uncertainties, makes the current market “interesting, to say the least”.

So, complacent he is not. But confident he is.

Huseby nods to DNB’s more than 50 years of experience navigating changing industry waters and riding out cyclical waves.

“Consistency,” he opines, “is the key.”

“We are strong, yet as flexible as our clients and the market needs us to be,” he continues. “We never stand still. That’s how we maintain our position. So we aim to be a partner and trusted advisor across the full spectrum of capital market products and lending services. Whether that’s bonds, equities, debt capital markets or pure lending… whatever is needed for clients to fulfil their strategies and achieve their goals.”

He smiles: “We are not a new name looking to seize opportunity and then move on. We are a long-term strategic partner, here to serve. Both our clients and the wider industry as a whole.”

Face-to-face focus

DNB, DNV and Höegh Autoliners are the Main Partners of Oslo Ocean Days, where a full programme of discussions, knowledge sharing, networking and social events awaits participants.

For his part, Huseby will sit on a panel with experts from a range of other leading lenders and institutions, coming together for that aforementioned “broad dialogue” that he believes is so key to progress.

“Shipping and the ocean industries are often seen through lenses of heavy assets, balance sheets and technology,” he remarks, “but this is first and foremost a people business, where expertise, connections and face-to-face understanding are what makes all the difference.

“That sums up the need for Oslo Ocean Days in a nutshell. It puts the spotlight on people power. That’s what can really drive us forward into the future with confidence.”