By Gwladys Fouche and Camilla Knudsen
Reuters
Norway’s $840 billion sovereign fund, the world’s biggest equity investor, has cut its investments in gold and coal miners due to environmental concerns and will review the entire mining sector this year, it said on Friday.
The fund, which grew by $200 billion in 2013 alone and owns about 1 percent of all global stocks, exited its investments in 27 gold and coal miners in 2013 and cut its stakes in others. The wider sector review potentially heralds one of the biggest changes since it was set up as a sovereign wealth fund in 1998.
“There is environmental damage by definition,” Chief Executive Yngve Slyngstad told Reuters. “It does not mean that we are selling out of the sector. We are concentrating our investments on the companies that we think are continuing this activity in a more sustainable way.”