The Norges Bank, Norway’s central bank, in Oslo, Norway, on Tuesday, October 17, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg |
Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund reported a half-year profit of 1.48 trillion krone ($138 billion) on Wednesday, largely because of robust returns from its investments in technology stocks.
The so-called Government Pension Fund Global – the biggest sovereign wealth fund on the earth – said it was value 17.75 trillion krone at the top of June.
The fund’s total return for the six-month period was 8.6%, 0.04 percentage points below the return of its benchmark index.
Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said on Wednesday that equity investments had delivered a “very strong” return in the primary half of the yr.
“The result was mainly due to technology stocks, due to increased demand for new solutions in the field of artificial intelligence,” Tangen noted.
The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund said its equity portfolio returned 12.5 percent in the primary half of the yr, while its fixed-income securities and unlisted real estate portfolios suffered minor losses.
The fund reported negative returns of 17.7 percent for its unlisted renewable energy infrastructure portfolio in the primary six months of the yr. Higher capital costs had a negative impact on the worth of investments within the period from January to June, it said.
Looking ahead, NBIM’s Tangen said in a press conference that stock markets will not be expected to rise as much as they’ve in recent times, in line with Reuters.
Tangen reportedly said that there are actually greater risks to global equity markets because of great uncertainty and a “completely different geopolitical situation.”
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, considered one of the world’s largest investors, was established within the Nineties to take a position the surpluses from the country’s oil and gas sector. To date, the fund has invested in greater than 8,700 corporations in over 70 countries worldwide.
