Norway’s sovereign wealth fund last year returned 13 percent, or a record annual profit of US$222 billion, but missed its self-imposed target for the second year in a row despite gains from the booming US technology sector.
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) — the official name of the US$1.8 trillion fund — saw investments in equities gain 18 percent last year, it said in a statement yesterday.
After the value of real-estate holdings fell, the fund missed the benchmark it measures itself against by 45 basis points, it said.
Photo: Bloomberg
The relative return was the third-worst year in percentage terms, NBIM chief executive officer Nicolai Tangen said at a press conference at Norges Bank in Oslo, Norway.
The fund’s real-estate portfolio underperformed relative to the stock market and the fund was also underweight equities, in particular the biggest US tech stocks, he said.
Even so, NBIM ended last year with a tech-heavy portfolio, with companies including Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Nvidia Corp among its top 10 holdings.
In recent days, the sector has been in turmoil after Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek (深度求索) raised questions over valuations.
Tangen said that the strong performance of global stock markets in recent years will eventually come to an end.
“I just want to warn again that this will not last forever,” he added.
LIMITED LEEWAY
Though NBIM is largely an index tracker that invests according to a strict mandate overseen by Norway’s finance ministry, it seeks to make most of its limited leeway. It owns, on average, 1.5 percent of all the world’s listed companies.
Founded in the early 1990s, NBIM is tasked with thinking long-term and investing Norway’s oil and gas revenues abroad.
Having started with seed capital of about US$300 million, the fund is today the world’s biggest single owner of equities, with the bulk of its capital in publicly listed stocks.
It measures itself against a bespoke benchmark based on the FTSE Global All Cap Index for equities and Bloomberg Barclays indices for fixed income.
The fund gained 1 percent on its fixed-income investments. Its unlisted real estate holdings fell 1 percent, while the return on unlisted renewable-energy infrastructure was down 10 percent, NBIM said.
The Norwegian government deposited 402 billion kroner (US$35.6 billion) into the fund last year, short of a record set in 2022 of nearly 1.1 trillion kroner.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on a pressing national issue: The rebranding of a restaurant chain. Last week, Cracker Barrel, a Tennessee company whose nationwide locations lean heavily on a cozy, old-timey aesthetic — “rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table” — announced it was updating its logo. Uncle Herschel, the man who once appeared next to the letters with a barrel, was gone. It sparked ire on the right, with Donald Trump Jr leading a charge against the rebranding: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” Later, Trump Sr weighed
HEADWINDS: Upfront investment is unavoidable in the merger, but cost savings would materialize over time, TS Financial Holding Co president Welch Lin said TS Financial Holding Co (台新新光金控) said it would take about two years before the benefits of its merger with Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) become evident, as the group prioritizes the consolidation of its major subsidiaries. “The group’s priority is to complete the consolidation of different subsidiaries,” Welch Lin (林維俊), president of the nation’s fourth-largest financial conglomerate by assets, told reporters during its first earnings briefing since the merger took effect on July 24. The asset management units are scheduled to merge in November, followed by life insurance in January next year and securities operations in April, Lin said. Banking integration,
LOOPHOLES: The move is to end a break that was aiding foreign producers without any similar benefit for US manufacturers, the US Department of Commerce said US President Donald Trump’s administration would make it harder for Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc to ship critical equipment to their chipmaking operations in China, dealing a potential blow to the companies’ production in the world’s largest semiconductor market. The US Department of Commerce in a notice published on Friday said that it was revoking waivers for Samsung and SK Hynix to use US technologies in their Chinese operations. The companies had been operating in China under regulations that allow them to import chipmaking equipment without applying for a new license each time. The move would revise what is known
Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Cambricon Technologies Corp (寒武紀科技) plunged almost 9 percent after warning investors about a doubling in its share price over just a month, a record gain that helped fuel a US$1 trillion Chinese market rally. Cambricon triggered the selloff with a Thursday filing in which it dispelled talk about nonexistent products in the pipeline, reminded investors it labors under US sanctions, and stressed the difficulties of ascending the technology ladder. The Shanghai-listed company’s stock dived by the most since April in early yesterday trading, while the market stood largely unchanged. The litany of warnings underscores growing scrutiny of
RSS