The largest sovereign background in the world, the Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) of the Norwegian government, has just announced its performance of the first half of the year in which it obtained a yield of 5.7%, raising its value in almost U $ 70,000 million and thus reaching a total value of more than U $ S1,936 billionsomething like more than three times the size of the Argentine economy.
It should be remembered that it was created in the late 1990s to invest the surplus income of the Norway oil and gas industry, and currently has a small shareholding in more than 8,500 companies in more than 60 countries, from different sectors and currencies. But, in addition, it has almost 1.5% of all traded companies, so it is the greater individual investor in shares globally. Another part invests it in sovereign and corporate bonds and also has 900 properties in important cities and renewable energy infrastructure projects. Therefore, it is one of the main players in the world financial and stock market, so their movements are monitored, as well as those of the legendary Warren Buffett.
But beyond the good semiannual performance of the fund, which, according to its CEO, Nicolai Tangenwas due to good returns in the sharing market, particularly in the financial sector, the other announcement, in the previous presentation of the results, that shook investors was linked to the war conflict between Israel and Palestine.
What announced? According to the Arab and Israeli press, the Sovereign Fund of Norway said he hopes to unintentionally in more Israeli companies as part of his current revision of investments in the country due to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. Tangen declared: “The situation in Gaza is a serious humanitarian crisis. We invest in companies that operate in a country at war, and the conditions in the West Bank and Gaza have recently worsened.”
Already last Monday, the fund announced that the contracts were terminating the external asset managers that handled some of their Israeli investments and that it had sold parts of its portfolio in the country due to the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
According to the Arab and Israeli media, the review began last week after the Norwegian newspaper “Aftenposten” reported that the fund had invested in more than 2% of the shareholding package in the Israeli company Bet Shemesh Engines Holdings (Bsel), which manufactures parts for reaction engines used in combat planes of the Israeli armed forces, including maintenance of said Airplanes However, a day later the fund announced that participation in the Bsel company, already sold.
The Norwegian Fund, a subsidiary of the Central Bank of Norway, which at the beginning of last July had participations in 61 Israeli companies, in recent days it was undone of participations in 11 companies, including BSEL, without revealing the name of the other companies. Today the Fund CEO reported that They hoped to uninvert in more companiesat a press conference.
According to the portals “Thearabweekly” and “Times of Israel”, the background began investing in Bsel in November 2023, approximately one month after the massacre of October 7 in southern Israel, led by Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza, through an external investment manager, according to Tangen. The background refused to reveal the name of the external portfolio manager. Since then, NBIM has held quarterly meetings with BSHL, but the war in Gaza did not consider as theme. “We had discussions about their businesses in the United States, not about the war in Gaza,” Tangen said, adding that the background had described Bsel as an “average risk” action regarding ethical concerns. Then in May, Bsel was evaluated as a high -risk action.
That change should have been faster, Tangen said, and added that Nbim should have had a more rigorous supervision of these investments previously. “We should have been faster to recover control of Israeli investments”said. The Fund said that the monitoring of Israeli companies intensified in the autumn of 2024 and that, as a result, we sold our investments in several Israeli companies. ” On Bsel investment, Tangen said the decision was made “in response to extraordinary circumstances.”
They also emphasize that after Tangen confirmed the news about their Israeli investments and that they had increased their participation after the Israeli offensive began in Gaza, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store asked the Minister of Finance and former general secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, a review.
NBIM said he had investments in 61 Israeli companies at the end of the first six months of this year, 11 of which were not in his “Actions Reference Index”, which is established by the Ministry of Finance and used to measure the performance of the wealth fund. In a statement, he added that he had decided last week that “All investments in Israeli companies that are not in the stock market reference index will be sold as soon as possible”. The fund also stated that “he has paid special attention to the companies associated with war and conflicts.” Since 2020, we have been in contact with more than 60 companies to raise this problem. Of these, 39 were related to the West Bank and Gaza, Nbim said. It is worth remembering that Norway recognized the state of Palestine in May 2024, together with Ireland and Spain.
As for the semiannual results, the change in the background value is broken down into an accounting yield of US $ 69,800 million, government transfers of US $ 15.6 billion after costs and a negative contribution of a stronger crown. The shares represented 70.6% of the value of the fund at the end of the period, the income fixes 27.1%, the real estate 1.9% and the non -quoted renewable energy infrastructure 0.4%.
Source: Ambito
