About

When talking about Johan Woo Kvandal, one peer gives the following praise: ‘he earned an INSEAD MBA, a vice president position at Statnett, and position as the chief general legal counsel at the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency (NDMA), by the age of 36’. Kvandal took his first in-house role in August 2009 by joining Statnett, the Norwegian state owned enterprise that operates the country’s stem power grid. Over a period of seven years with the company he worked on a number of large projects in the Nordic region including the Norlink project to develop high voltage interconnectors running from Norway to Germany, one of largest power transmission projects ever completed in Europe. It was a project that required collaboration on three fronts while managing the interests of various stakeholders, including German investment banking group, KFW, German company Tennet, and the Danish authorities. In overseeing the legal elements to this project, alongside a further international project involving stakeholders in the UK, Kvandal led an international team of Dutch, UK, Danish, German, Norwegian lawyers and regularly interacted with commercial departments and technicians. Kvandal led all negotiations and was responsible for all sides of the project, including legal, commercial and technical from the Norwegian side. As a result of his successful management on the project, Statnett promoted Kvandal to the position of vice president in 2015. The following year he was recruited by Forsvarsmateriell, Norway’s Defence Materiel Agency. There he oversees NOK13bn acquisitions each year and has been, according to one nominator, ‘responsible for creating a legal team capable of managing the legal risks that NDMA is exposed to’.