This article first appeared on Floating Path.
Norway’s $800 billion pension fund has posed a challenge to its managers of late, and now a plan to invest in infrastructure and private equity has gained the support of a Norges Bank governor.
Oeystein Olsen, a governor of Norway’s central bank which oversees the fund, publicly stated that a 2010 recommendation by Norges Bank to expand asset class investments is prudent and natural.
“Right now there are no immediate plans of making new requests but when the fund expands, the signal that was given by Norges Bank in 2010 was quite natural.”
The fund will expand, soon.
Currently, the pension fund must maintain allocations of 60% equity, 35% bonds, and 5% real estate. The real estate portion of the portfolio was added only recently in an attempt to diversify a fund that owns roughly 1.5% of every publicly listed company in the world.
The consistent growth of the fund’s size has led CEO Yngve Slyngstad to stop buying stocks altogether with new inflows. Despite the passive approach, the fund still returned 5% last quarter, or 228 billion kroner, as global equity markets continued their march higher.
