The gentleman in question is Robin Wigglesworth, editor of FT Alphaville who swears that despite the name he is indeed Norwegian.
From FTAV, December 9:
The $1.3tn contrarian wealth fundYes, absolutely *everyone* wants to be contrarian these days
Norway’s $1.3tn sovereign wealth fund has unveiled a new strategy. Given its size — it famously owns an average 1.5 per cent of every listed company in the world — it’s worth a closer look.
Some of the headline changes were trailed by chief executive Nicolai Tangen at an FT conference on Wednesday, a day before the formal strategy plan was released:.The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund will become a more vocal shareholder and plans to vote against companies that fail to set a net zero emissions target, overpay their top leaders, or do not have sufficiently diverse boards..Some background: Norges Bank Investment Management is formally housed inside the central bank, its money comes from Norway’s oil and gas revenues, its investment mandate is formulated by the finance ministry and approved by parliament..
Also some disclosure: the author of this post is Norwegian [but you never mention it — Ed], lives in Oslo, and has given speeches to the fund literally talking his book (one free, and one where the fee was directly donated to UNICEF by NBIM).The governance stuff is naturally what will generate the most heat. ESG is suffering a bit of a backlash at the moment (FTAV is a bit sceptical as well), but given Norwegian politics the sovereign wealth fund cannot help but be seen to be at the vanguard of the issue. NBIM was excluding companies on ethical grounds long before ESG was even a glimmer in the eyes of asset-management marketing directors..
But most interesting (to us) titbit hinted at by Tangen on Wednesday was that NBIM could take better advantage of its long-term investment perspective and limited liquidity needs to “be more contrarian”. (These days it’s getting harder to find anyone who won’t describe themselves as a contrarian.)....
....MUCH MORE
