The Government Pension Fund of Norway is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund with assets worth $1.62 trillion as of March 2024, or $300 thousand per citizen. It is believed that the fund holds 1.5% of shares in all companies in the world, but makes the largest investments in the IT sector.

The Government Pension Fund of Norway was established in 1990 and invests surplus revenues from the Norwegian oil sector. The fund’s investments are managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, which is a part of the central bank of Norway (Norges Bank) and is subordinated to the Ministry of Finance.

Інвестиції в IT

The assets of the Norwegian State Pension Fund are divided into fixed income assets from securities of different countries (27.1% of the portfolio), equities of different companies (70.5%), real estate investments (2.2%), and infrastructure investments (0.2%). All data from Visual Capitalist as of 2023.

The Norwegian Pension Fund invests in securities: US – $103 billion, Japan – $33 billion, Germany – $17 billion, UK – $12 billion, France – $11 billion, and other developed countries.

But the set of shares owned by the fund looks more interesting:

  1. Apple – $33 billion
  2. Microsoft – $31 billion
  3. Alphabet – $16 billion
  4. Amazon – $14 billion
  5. NVIDIA – $12 billion

In other words, whoever wins the race of IT giants will win the Government Pension Fund of Norway.

The Fund does not invest in certain companies for ethical reasons. These include cigarette manufacturers, producers of nuclear weapons and some other types of weapons (e.g., cluster munitions), companies that violate human rights, pollute the environment, etc.

In Norway itself, the fund is criticized for saving rough money for the future instead of spending at least a share of the current state budget.

It is an interesting fact that despite the fact that the Government Pension Fund of Norway is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, Norway is only the 4th largest sovereign wealth fund. The fact is that some countries have 2-4 similar funds.

Countries by total size of sovereign wealth funds:

  1. China – $2.75 trillion
  2. Singapore – $2.07 trillion
  3. United Arab Emirates – $2.06 trillion
  4. Norway – $1.62 trillion
  5. Saudi Arabia – $1.35 trillion