Latest news with #NorwayWealthFund
Arab News
03-06-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Norway fund's ethics body reviews Israeli bank stakes over West Bank settler loans
OSLO/LONDON/JERUSALEM: The ethics watchdog for Norway's $1.9 trillion wealth fund is scrutinizing Israeli banks' practice of underwriting Israeli settlers' housebuilding commitments in the occupied West Bank in a review that could prompt up to $500 million in Council on Ethics, a public body set up by the Ministry of Finance, has, however, decided not to object to the Fund's investments in accommodation platforms such as Airbnb that offer rentals in the Jewish body checks that firms in the portfolio of the world's largest wealth fund meet ethical guidelines set by Norway's an interview with Reuters on May 22, Council head Svein Richard Brandtzaeg said it was examining how Israeli banks offer guarantees that protect Israeli settlers' money if the company building their home in the West Bank should practices are also being looked at 'but this is what we can see so far,' he said. 'That is what is well documented.' He declined to say how long the review would did not name the banks but, at the end of 2024, the fund owned about 5 billion crowns ($500 million) in shares in the five largest Israeli lenders, up 62 percent in 12 months, according to the latest banks — Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi Tefahot Bank and First International Bank of Israel — did not answer requests for 2020, they have been included in a list of companies with ties to settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories compiled by a UN mission assessing the implications for Palestinian investor concern has grown around the world over a 19-month-old Israeli onslaught that has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the Gaza Strip in response to an attack by Hamas militants that killed more than 1,200 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East settlements are adjacent to Palestinian areas and some Israeli firms serve both Israelis and United Nations' top court last year found that Israeli settlements built on territory seized in 1967 were illegal, a ruling that Israel called 'fundamentally wrong,' citing historical and biblical ties to the RENTALS IN WEST BANK SETTLEMENTSIn mid-2024, the Council on Ethics began a new review of investments linked to the West Bank and examined 65 companies but recommended only petrol station chain Paz and telecoms company Bezeq for divestment, resulting in share Council also scrutinized some multinationals to see if their activities in the West Bank met its them were the accommodation platforms, including Airbnb, TripAdviser and Expedia, named on the UN list and accounting for about $3 billion in Fund the Council will not recommend watchlisting or divesting from those, Eli Ane Lund, head of its secretariat, said in the joint interview.'The company's activity must have some kind of influence on the (ethical) violations,' she said. 'It's not (enough) to have a connection, it has to have something to do with the violation, it must contribute to it.'The Council's recommendations go to the central bank, which is not obliged to follow them but generally investments are sold, it is done gradually to avoid alerting markets, and the decision is then made campaigners say the Council sets its bar too high for recommending divestments, and that the Norwegian government should instruct the fund to conduct a general divestment from Israel just as it did for Russia in 2022, three days after Moscow invaded most lawmakers support the Council's approach, and are set on Wednesday to formally endorse a parliamentary finance committee's decision not to order a wholesale boycott.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Norway Wealth Fund is freezing hiring to focus on AI use, despite research showing AI projects seldom offer a return in investment
The Norway Wealth Fund will take steps to invest more in AI and other technologies and put a pause on hiring new staff, according to CEO Nicolai Tangen. Tangen previously told Fortune its AI has significantly reduced the amount of time needed to monitor the risks of the companies in which it invests. A recent IBM survey of 2,000 CEOs found that despite continued investment in AI, most companies did not see a return in investment. The Norway Wealth Fund, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, is putting a pause on hiring, focusing on investing in technology such as AI to drive productivity, according to CEO Nicolai Tangen. 'We do not foresee the number of employees increasing any further,' Tangen said in a Tuesday meeting with lawmakers in Oslo, Bloomberg reported. The wealth fund, or Norges Bank Investment Management, employs 676 people across offices in Oslo, London, New York and Singapore, as of the end of 2024, according to its annual report. The year prior, it had 654 employees, up from 572 in 2022. Responsible for managing a $1.8 trillion fund, the fund invests in about 9,000 companies globally. 'We're spending a lot of time on how to get the most performance out of the fund,' Tangen told Fortune's Peter Vanham prior to the Tuesday meeting. 'We've increased the level of ambition, to get speed in the organization. We encourage the use of AI to drive speed and efficiency.' The Norway Wealth Fund this year measured employees' responses to the technology and found in internal surveys employees reported an average 15% increase in productivity because of AI tools. The technology has significantly cut down on the time needed to monitor risks of the companies in which it invests, Tangen said. 'Before it could take days, now it takes minutes,' he said. 'We have a risk department that sells down positions with high risks as an outcome.' Norges Bank Investment Management declined Fortune's request for comment. Betting big on AI hasn't been all it's cracked up to be for some major companies. After implementing a hiring freeze and touting its AI chatbot, powered by OpenAI, could complete the work of 700 human agents, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has changed course. He conceded last week that AI had its limitations and said the company would resume hiring human workers. 'As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too-predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,' he told Bloomberg last week. 'Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.' A Klarna spokesperson previously told Fortune the company was 'very much still AI-first' and will keep its policy of not replacing employees who leave, instead hiring freelance customer-service agents for its outsourcing division. Other chief executives have come to similar conclusions. Of 2,000 CEOs surveyed, a quarter of them said AI projects delivered the promised return on investment, according to an IBM study published earlier this month. Only 16% reported those projects were scaled across the enterprise. Regardless of AI's limitations, companies will likely continue to invest heavily in the technology, with 64% of CEOs saying they're going all-in on AI out of fear that they'll fall behind other companies if they don't, according to the IBM survey. About half of them said using AI has generated value beyond cost reduction. The gamble on AI may continue to impact workforce numbers. Timothy Young, CEO of marketing platform said he believes AI may continue to impact certain hiring considerations. 'With the commoditization of intelligence, it's not about having the smartest people anymore,' he told Fortune's Diane Brady. 'It's about developing your staff to have management skills because every employee in the next 12 months is going to have a series of agents that are helping them do their work.' 'There is a lot of power in the junior employees, but you can't leverage them the same way that you would in the past,' he added. This story was originally featured on
