Latest news with #WealthFund
Al Arabiya
27-05-2025
- Business
- Al Arabiya
Norway to reject calls for ban by wealth fund on companies in Israeli-occupied areas
Norway's parliament is poised to reject campaigners' calls to instruct its $1.8 trillion wealth fund to boycott any company selling products and services in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a person familiar with the process. A majority in the Norwegian parliament's finance committee has decided that only companies that can be linked to the violation of international law should be excluded from the fund's portfolio, not just any companies with a presence in these areas, the person said. The International Court of Justice said last year Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories was illegal and it should pull out as soon as possible, in a ruling that Tel Aviv rejected as 'fundamentally wrong' and one-sided. Currently, the fund, which operates under ethical guidelines set by the Norwegian parliament, has blacklisted 11 companies for assisting Israel's occupation, the last of which was Israeli petrol station chain Paz earlier this month. At the end of last year the fund had just over $2 billion invested in 65 Israeli companies, or 0.1 percent of its total. Since the start of the war in Gaza, the fund has faced growing pressure to divest from Israeli companies and all companies active in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. That would effectively force it to sell billions of dollars in stakes in major Western brands, some of which have already faced consumer boycott calls especially in Muslim-majority countries because they were perceived as friendly to Israel. Campaigners want the Norwegian government to take the same action on Israel-linked investments as it did on Russian ones in 2022, when three days after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine it instructed the fund to dispose of all of its holdings in Russia. However, the decision by the parliamentary finance committee means no blanket ban on Israeli firms or on multinationals with global sales only because their products and services are available in occupied Palestinian territories. 'If a company sells a generic product, which Israeli settlers buy, then this should not be sufficient to sell the fund out of the company,' said the person familiar with the committee's decision, adding it would constitute a wider interpretation of the guidelines. 'But if we are speaking of specific products for, say, surveillance that are made specifically for the needs of Israeli settlers, then that is something completely different.' The committee's decision is part of its assessment of the government's annual filing on the wealth fund, which is due to be debated in parliament on June 4, with a vote expected the same day. Lawmakers are expected to vote along their parties' lines as set in the parliamentary finance committee's conclusions. The decision will be closely watched, given Norway's fund, which owns 1.5 percent of the world's listed shares across 9,000 companies, is seen as a leader in the field of investing focused on environmental, social and governance issues. The finance committee also decided the fund should maintain a ban on investments in defense contractors that make components for nuclear weapons, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing or Airbus. As Reuters earlier reported, political parties have debated whether to remove the ban given the changed security environment created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the need to develop the Western defense industry. But ultimately a majority of the finance committee decided against, concerned that its lifting would make managing the fund's ethical risk more complex. The fund already owns shares in defense companies that sell weapons to Israel, including Germany's Rheinmetall and Italy's Leonardo, but not in the larger ones, like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman.
Reuters
07-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Push to allow Norway's wealth fund to invest in defence companies falters
OSLO, May 7 (Reuters) - Opposition efforts to allow Norway's $1.8 trillion wealth fund, the world's largest, to invest in large defence companies appear to be faltering, according to lawmakers involved in the process. The fund follows ethical rules decided by parliament that prevent it from buying stakes in the likes of Airbus ( opens new tab, Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab, BAE Systems (BAES.L), opens new tab and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab on the grounds they make components for nuclear weapons. Two opposition parties, the Conservatives and the Progress Party, have in recent months called on lawmakers to change the fund's guidelines on that point, coming at a time when European countries are ramping up military investment. Support for change also came from the head of the central bank, which operates the fund, who said in February Norway "must be open to the possibility that what is considered to be ethically acceptable may change as the world again becomes marked by military rearmament and growing tensions between countries". The Conservatives say it is no longer reasonable to exclude companies that make equipment critical to Norway and its allies' battle power. The fund can invest in defence companies if they are not involved in the production of nuclear weapons and is therefore invested in the likes of Rheinmetall ( opens new tab or Leonardo ( opens new tab. But the guidelines prevent the fund from investing in several major defence companies. Progress, meanwhile, is presenting a private member's bill, which argues it is hypocritical of Oslo to ban its fund from buying shares in Lockheed Martin while buying 52 F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. defence contractor at the same time. "This is to make capital available to the defence industry, which is especially necessary now," one of the co-authors of the bill, Hans Andreas Limi, told Reuters. They would require support from other parties to overturn the will of the minority Labour government and allow one of the world's largest investors to allot billions of dollars to defence companies. This could in turn encourage other investors sceptical of the defence industry to reconsider their views, given the fund has long been a leading voice on matters of ethical investing. LACK OF SUPPORT But supporters of the change appear to be facing an uphill battle. Among those opposing the change, is the finance ministry, led by no other than former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of the Labour Party. "We believe it is too early for another full review of the guidelines now," Deputy Finance Minister Ellen Reitan told Reuters. She said there had to be a broad consensus in parliament and reviews of the fund's ethical criteria should not be made on an ad hoc basis. "Over time, it may be appropriate to change the criteria in the guidelines. Such changes should be made on the basis of comprehensive and thorough assessments where the criteria are seen in context," she said. In a sign of its opposition, the finance ministry did not mention a possible change in its white paper on the fund in April. The paper would be the natural place to flag the issue if it were to be debated and voted on in parliament in the coming weeks. A key vote could come from the Centre Party, but it also appears to be against the proposed change. "To have calm around the fund is important, and a guarantee of its perennity, so I think it is wise to proceed very carefully," Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, the leader of the Centre Party, who until January was finance minister, told Reuters. Other parties, such as the Greens, concur. "It is true that we are in a phase of massive military armament, which we need to support," Rasmus Hansson, parliamentary leader for the Greens, told Reuters. "But we see no reason for it to be necessary for the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund to profit from this rearmament."
Zawya
25-03-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Turkey's Wealth Fund borrows $1.19bln without treasury guarantee
Turkey's Wealth Fund (TVF) has secured a syndicated loan totalling 1.1 billion euros ($1.19 billion), it said on Tuesday, borrowing for the first time without a guarantee from the country's treasury. In a statement, the wealth fund said 20 banks from 12 countries were involved in the two-year loan made up of two tranches, of 837 million euros and $285 million. The total cost of the syndicated loan was set at 2% over the equivalent Euribor rate per annum for the euro tranche and 2.25% over the Secured Overnight Financing rate (SOFR) for the U.S. dollar tranche. ($1 = 0.9260 euros) (Reporting by Ebru Tuncay; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
