Reuters: Norway’s sovereign wealth fund may pull investments from Israel | News

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund may pull its investments from Israel after adopting a new interpretation of its ethics policy, Reuters reported.

The agency said the fund, which has assets of $1.7 trillion, may be forced to divest shares of companies that violate a new, stricter interpretation issued by the fund’s oversight body of ethics standards for companies that assist Israel’s operations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The ethics board of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund sent a letter on Aug. 30 to the finance ministry, seen by Reuters, outlining a recently expanded definition of unethical corporate behavior.

Pressure has recently increased on the Norwegian fund to reconsider the terms under which it invests in Israel because of the war on Gaza, with parliamentarians and several NGOs calling for a complete withdrawal of investments from there.

Fund investigations

The fund’s ethics watchdog has been investigating in recent months whether Israeli companies in which the fund holds shares are not complying with investment guidelines allowed because of the war.

Universities and fund managers around the world have been under pressure to pull out of their investments because of Israel’s 11-month-old war on the Gaza Strip.

The pressure has extended to the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, which had investments worth 15 billion kroner ($1.36 billion) across 76 companies in Israel at the end of 2023, including investments in real estate, banking, energy and telecommunications, according to fund data.

These investments represent 0.1% of the fund’s total investments.

“The Israeli economy depends on international investment and support from the United States,” Reuters quoted Lynn Khatib, head of the Palestine Committee in Norway, a non-governmental organization, as saying. “So we must distance ourselves from the Israeli economy to stop the ongoing genocide.”

In parallel, concerns have been rising in Israel about the possibility of the Norwegian Fund withdrawing its investments in Israel, especially since the Fund has previously taken decisions in recent years to withdraw its investments from companies linked to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.