Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), which owns about 1.5 percent of listed stocks worldwide has excluded some of the biggest oil and gas, commodity stocks in the world from its portfolio of investments.
The $1 trillion wealth fund exclusions include Glencore Plc, Anglo American Plc, Utility RWE and Canadian oil producer Suncor Energy Inc.
Other oil producers affected were Canadian Natural Resourses Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc, and Imperial Oil Ltd.
“Norges Bank’s Executive Board has decided to exclude the companies Sasol Ltd, RWE AG, Glencore PLC, AGL Energy Ltd and Anglo American PLC after an assessment against the product-based coal criteria, ref. section 2 (2), subsections c and d, of the Guidelines for Observation and Exclusion of Companies from the Government Pension Fund Global.
The exclusions are based on the new absolute thresholds for coal companies that were added to the guidelines last year. The amendments took effect 1 September 2019. It is the first time these thresholds in the coal criterion are being applied,” management of the fund said in a statement on its website.
The SWF explained that for several of the companies of which exclusion is now being made public, the market situation, including the liquidity of individual shares, has meant that it has taken a long time to sell the shares in a reasonable manner.
“That explains why a long period of time has passed between some of the decisions and the publication.”