The Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global has excluded the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart and mining company Freeport from its investments following recommendations from the fund’s council on ethics.

The Norwegian pensions industry is waiting for an outcome of a hearing by the country’s ministry of finance on the costs of defined contribution (DC) schemes.

Reeta Cevik speaks to Tom Rathke, CFO of Vital, on the pension company’s four principles of investment, which include risk taking and a stringent monitoring of managers’ SRI activities

KLP, the NKr159.1bn (€20.49bn) Norwegian public sector pension insurance company, has appointed Sverre Thornes as executive vice president and head of pensions and life insurance.

Kredittilsynet, Norway’s financial services regulator, is drafting a set of new investment regulations for local pension funds. 

Kredittilsynet has also outlined plans to introduce a new system to supervise the capital requirements for Norwegian insurance companies and pension funds. The proposal is currently being considered at the ministry of finance.

Vital, the €25.4bn Norwegian pension and life insurance company is expanding its emerging market equity portfolio from 3 to 5 per cent of its total equity exposure. Equities currently form 23.3 per cent of the fund’s total investment portfolio.

Norway’s government pension fund – foreign, formerly the petroleum fund, has just reported a 2005 return against benchmark of 1.1 per cent and now has assets of nearly NKr1,400bn (€175bn). Liam Kennedy spoke with Knut Kjær, executive director at Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the fund, about internal restructuring aimed at separating alpha and beta returns, and about keeping costs within benchmark while selecting the best possible alpha generators

Norway’s Statens Pensjonsfonds – Utland (SPU) (formerly the state petroleum fund) last year implemented an alpha-beta separation strategy for its equity holdings, hard on the heels of a similar strategy implemented in the fixed income area several years ago.

Norway’s NKr200bn (€25.14bn) Storebrand Asset Management introduced alpha-beta separation throughout its investments in 2003 and has been developing the process ever since.