Norway has always said its sovereign wealth fund belongs to the people. But recently, that’s needed a bit of clarification.
Since hitting a record 10 trillion kroner ($1.1 trillion) last month, the fund has noticed an uptick in inquiries from Norwegians wondering whether they can now withdraw their share. Requests range from people asking for their full pro-rata stake — which, given Norway’s population of about 5.3 million, comes to more than $200,000 per person — to less serious pleas for a few coins to buy a can of soda.
“It’s nice that people get involved and are aware that this fund belongs to everyone,” said Marthe Skaar, a spokeswoman for Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the fund from Oslo.
Though some Norwegians may be disappointed to learn they can’t make withdrawals, Skaar says the sudden spike in public interest in the fund represents a good opportunity to explain it’s also supposed to benefit future generations. She said that such requests are nothing new and the fund doesn’t keep a precise tally, although there had been an “upswing” after the valuation milestone.
The Government Pension Fund Global, as it is officially known, isn’t really a pension fund. Its purpose is to ensure that Norway keeps profiting from its oil wealth long after the fossil-fuel era ends. It only invests outside Norway, to avoid overheating the domestic economy.
Fiscal Stimulus
The government also spends some of its oil wealth on present-day Norwegians. After a drop in crude prices, it was forced to tap the fund to pad its budget in a rare example of fiscal stimulus in Europe.
A lot of oil-producing countries have set up wealth funds, but Norway’s remains a unique experiment in natural-resource wealth management. The fund’s mandate is anchored in Parliament, and has evolved over time with ethical restrictions on tobacco, certain weapons and most coal producers.
Norway’s wealth fund holds roughly 1.5% of the world’s listed equities. The past decade has seen a steep increase in its value, after a buying spree on cheap stocks during the financial crisis resulted in a quadrupling of its size since 2008. More than half the investor’s value is from its returns.
Source: Bloomberg
Can’t stop reading? Read more
Blackstone closing in on L’Occitane deal
Blackstone is closing in on a deal with L’Occitane International owner Reinold Geiger to take the global skincare company private, with the world’s largest alternative asset manager potentially providing debt financing for the buyout. The report cites people familiar...
Ares leads $1.2bn CentralSquare debt refinancing
Ares Management is leading a group of private credit firms including Oak Hill Advisors, providing a debt package of over $1.2bn to CentralSquare Technologies as the software developer looks to refinance its debt. The report cites unnamed people familiar with the mater...
EQT to acquire Spain’s Universidad Europea for over €2bn
EQT has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Spain's Universidad Europea from private equity firm Permira, in a deal that sources said valued the higher education group at more than 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) including debt. The buyout groups announced the deal...