When Inge Hansen found himself out of a job last month, he knew just where to look for another one. Hansen, who had lost out on becoming CEO of Norway's Statoil, turned to Oslo shipbuilder and oil and gas engineering conglomerate Aker Kvaerner. As it happened, it was Aker Kvaerner's CEO, Helge Lund, who had beaten him out for the top spot at the big oil company. Within five days Hansen, who had been acting CEO of Statoil, was ensconced in the corner office at Aker Kvaerner.

This executive version of musical chairs makes sense, contends Hansen, 57. "There is a very close relationship between the two companies: Statoil is the largest oil- and gas-field services client of Aker Kvaerner," he explains.

Still, Hansen might have preferred to run the far larger Statoil, for which he had arranged a highly successful IPO in 2001 while CFO. He was named acting CEO in September when his boss, CEO Olav Fjell, resigned amid a scandal over Statoil's award of an Iranian consultancy contract.

Well known in Norway from his days as a star on the national handball squad in the 1960s and '70s, Hansen ran an investment bank, Oslo's Orkla Finans, before joining one of its clients -- Statoil -- as finance chief in 2000. Some considered him the front-runner for the Statoil job, but the board opted for the 41-year-old Lund, a former McKinsey consultant, apparently because it wanted a younger chief executive. Lund had raised the once-troubled Aker Kvaerner's margins by integrating shipbuilding units and melding engineering operations.

For Hansen, landing the Aker Kvaerner job is somewhat ironic. Back in his investment banker days, he advised financier Kjell Inge Røkke on his takeover of Aker's maritime group, which was later merged with Kvaerner to form Aker Kvaerner.