Weighing more than 20,000 billion crowns (1,670 billion euros), the Norwegian sovereign fund, fueled by the Scandinavian kingdom income from gas and oil exploitation, is the largest investment fund in the world. Since the spring, votes, ever more numerous, in Norway and abroad, have been up to claim that he renounces his assets in Israeli companies. Monday, August 18, the fund announced that it would exclude six of them from its portfolio, “In connection with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank”on the basis of the recommendations of its ethics committee.
In a letter addressed to the Ministry of Finance, Nicolai Tangen, the boss of the fund, and Ida Wolden Bache, the governor of the Bank of Norway, specify that the fund has sold its shares in 23 listed companies in Israel, for a value of 4 billion crowns, since June 30. On August 14, he still held 19 billion crowns, invested in 38 Israeli companies, on more than 8,600 worldwide.
During a press conference on Monday, the Labor Minister of Finance, Jens Stoltenberg, did not exclude that the actions of other companies be sold, if the fund’s ethics committee, responsible for guaranteeing a responsible investment strategy, considered it necessary. The minister denied in passing that these disinvestments constitute “A politicization” of the fund, ensuring that the decision had been made on the basis of “Established procedures”.
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