The Government Pension Fund of Norway comprises two entirely separate sovereign wealth funds owned by the government of Norway.
The Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. It has over US$1 trillion in assets, including 1.3% of global stocks and shares, making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. In September 2017 it was worth $192,307 per Norwegian citizen. It also holds portfolios of real estate and fixed-income investments. Many companies are excluded by the fund on ethical grounds.
The Government Pension Fund Norway is smaller and was established in 1967 as a type of national insurance fund. It is managed separately from the Oil Fund and is limited to domestic and Scandinavian investments and is therefore a key stock holder in many large Norwegian companies, predominantly via the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Government Pension Fund Global
The Government Pension Fund Global (Norwegian: Statens pensjonsfond Utland, SPU) is a fund into which the surplus wealth produced by Norwegian petroleum income is deposited. Its name changed in January 2006 from the Petroleum Fund of Norway. The fund is commonly referred to as the Oil Fund (Norwegian: Oljefondet).
The purpose of the fund is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector, mainly from taxes of companies but also payment for licenses to explore for oil as well as the State's Direct Financial Interest and dividends from the partly state-owned Statoil. Current revenue from the petroleum sector is estimated to be at its peak period and to decline in the future decades. The Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 after a decision by the country's legislature to counter the effects of the forthcoming decline in income and to smooth out the disruptive effects of highly fluctuating oil prices.
As its name suggests, the Government Pension Fund Global is invested in international financial markets, so the risk is independent from the Norwegian economy.
Management and size
The domestic fund, the Government Pension Fund Norway, is managed by the Folketrygdfondet. The global investment fund is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), part of the Norwegian Central Bank on the behalf of the Ministry of Finance. It is the largest pension fund in Europe and larger than the California public-employees pension fund (CalPERS), one of the largest in the United States.
As of June 2011, it was the largest pension fund in the world, but it is not a pension fund in the conventional sense, as it derives its financial backing from oil profits, not pension contributions. In September 2017, the fund exceeded US$1Â trillion in value for the first time, a thirteen-fold increase since 2002. With a population of 5.2 million people, the fund was worth $192,307 per Norwegian citizen. Of the assets, 65% were equities (account for 1.3% of global equity markets), and the rest were property and fixed-income investments. Norway draws down 3% of the fund's value each year. In a parliamentary white paper in April 2011, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance forecast that the fund would reach $1Â trillion by the end of 2019. According to the forecast, a worst-case scenario for the fund value in 2030 was forecast at $455Â billion, and a best case scenario at $3.3Â trillion. With 2.33 percent of European stocks, it is the largest stock owner in Europe.
In 1998, the fund was allowed to invest up to 40 percent of its portfolio in the international stock market. In June 2009, the ministry decided to raise the stock portion to 60 percent. In May 2014, the Central Bank governor proposed raising the rate to 70 percent. The Norwegian government planned that up to 5 percent of the fund should be invested in real estate, beginning in 2010. A specific policy for the real estate investments was suggested in a report the Swiss Partners Group wrote for the Norwegian Ministry of Finance.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund is taking steps to become more active in company governance. In the second quarter of 2013, the sovereign fund voted in 6,078 general meetings as well as 239 shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues. Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) has the potential to influence the corporate governance market in Europe, and possibly China as well, greatly. It has also started to become active in pushing for lower executive pay.
Debate
As a result of the large size of the fund relative to the low number of people living in Norway (5.2 million people in 2017), the Oil Fund has become a hot political issue, dominated by three main issues:
- Whether the country should use more of the petroleum revenues for the state budget instead of saving the funds for the future. The main matter of debate is to what degree increased government spending would increase inflation.
- Whether the high level of exposure (around 65 percent in 2017) to the highly volatile stock market is financially safe. Others claim that the high diversification and extreme long-term nature of the investments will dilute the risk and that the state is losing considerable amounts of money because of the low investment percentage in the stock market.
- Whether the investment policy of the Petroleum Fund is ethical.
Ethical Council
Part of the investment policy debate is related to the discovery of several cases of investment by The Petroleum Fund in very controversial companies, involved in businesses such as arms production, tobacco and fossil fuels. The Petroleum Fund’s Advisory Council on Ethics was established 19 November 2004 by royal decree. Accordingly, the Ministry of Finance issued a new regulation on the management of the Government Petroleum Fund, which also includes ethical guidelines.
According to its ethical guidelines, the Norwegian pension fund cannot invest money in companies that directly or indirectly contribute to killing, torture, deprivation of freedom or other violations of human rights in conflict situations or wars. Contrary to popular belief, the fund is allowed to invest in a number of arms-producing companies, as only some kind of weapons, such as nuclear arms, are banned by the ethical guidelines as investment objects.
To support the ethical screening process, the Council on Ethics works with RepRisk ESG Business Intelligence, a global research firm and provider of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk data. RepRisk monitors the companies in the Norwegian Pension Fund’s portfolio for issues such as severe human rights violations, particularly regarding child labor, forced labour, and violations of individual rights in conflict areas as well as gross environmental degradation and corruption. RepRisk has been working with the Council on Ethics since 2009 and in 2014, re-won the tender for ESG data provision for 2014-2017.
An investigation by the Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv in February 2012 showed that Norway has invested more than $2 billion in 15 technology companies producing technology that can and has been used for filtering, wiretapping, or surveillance of communication in various countries, among them Iran, Syria, and Burma. Although surveillance tech is not the primary activity of all the 15 companies, they have all had or still have some kind of connection to such technology. The Ministry of Finance in Norway stated that it would not withdraw investing in these companies or discuss an eventual exclusion of surveillance industry companies from its investments.
The Ethical Council is headed by Ola Mestad, a Norwegian lawyer who works for the European Centre of Law, who previously worked for the law firm Bahr, where he was specialized in oil-sector issues. The other members are Gro Nystuen, Bente Rathe, Ylva Lindberg and Dag Olav Hessen.
On 19 January 2010 the Ministry of Finance announced that 17 tobacco companies had been excluded from the fund. The total divestment from these companies was $2Â billion (NOK 14.2Â billion), making it the largest divestment caused by ethical recommendations in the history of the fund.
Both Norway's minister of finance Siv Jensen and the Strategy Council, appointed by the Ministry of Finance, has recommended that the Ethical Council be dismantled.
In March 2014, as the result of both domestic and international pressure, the parliament appointed a panel to investigate whether the fund should divest its coal assets in line with its ethical investment mandate. The panel released its recommendations in December 2014, recommending the fund follow a strategy of corporate engagement rather than divestment. The parliament was set to make its decision early in 2015. In the event, the fund will be required to divest from companies that derive at least 30â„… of their business from coal.
In 2014, the fund divested from 53 coal companies around the world, including 16 companies in the US companies (among them Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources), 13 companies in India (including Coal India) and 3 companies in China. As a result, the total value of the fund’s coal holdings fell by 5% to $9.7 billion. In the same year of 2014 the fund increased its stakes in 59 out of 90 oil and gas companies in which it holds shares by $30 billion.
Excluded companies
The following companies have been excluded from the Government Pension Fund of Norway for activities in breach of the ethical guidelines:
The fund does not announce exclusions until it has completed sales of its positions, so as not to affect the share price at the time of the transaction.
In 2016, Norges Bank decided to exclude 52 coal companies from the fund.
Reinstated companies
Several previously excluded companies have later been reinstated to the fund because the companies were no longer involved in the activities that had led to their exclusion.
Companies "under observation"
As an alternative to full exclusion from the fund, companies may be placed "under observation" to help put pressure on the company to improve.
It has been proposed that one more company, Goldcorp, should be placed under similar observation.
Currency portfolio
In October 2010 the fund spent NOK 600 million ($136.4 million as of October 2010) daily buying foreign currencies. That figure would be increased to 800 million kroner daily in November. This practice was suspended in January 2011, and on 31 January it was announced that this would also be the case in February.
Government Pension Fund â€" Norway
The Government Pension Fund â€" Norway (Norwegian: Statens pensjonsfond Norge, SPN) was established by the National Insurance Act (Folketrygdloven) in 1967 under the name National Insurance Scheme Fund (Norwegian: Folketrygdfondet). The name was changed at the same time as the former Petroleum Fund, on 1 January 2006. It continues to be managed by a separate board and separate government entity, still named Folketrygdfondet. The Government Pension Fund â€" Norway had a value of NOK 106.9 billion at the end of 2006. Unlike the Global division, it is required to limit its investments to companies in the Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish stock markets, predominantly on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Thus, it is a key stock owner in many large Norwegian companies.
Notes
See also
References
External links
- Norwegian Ministry of Finance: On the Government Pension Fund
- The Government Pension Fund â€" Norway: Official site
- The Government Pension Fund â€" Global: Official site
- Companies Excluded from the Investment Universe
- MONEY METER for the value of the Government Pension Fund Global (unofficial site)
- Fem grunner til at regjeringen undertrykker urfolk
- Norges Bank: Observation and Exclusion of Companies
