Quarterly returns for Norway’s sovereign wealth fund increased in the July-to-September period from the second quarter, according to results released this morning, with all asset classes generating money and the smallest – green energy infrastructure – staging a partial recovery from steep losses earlier this year.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which runs the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), said the fund’s value rose to NOK18.87trn (€1.6trn) by the end of September following a third-quarter return of 4.4% — equivalent to NOK835bn.

Trond Grande, deputy chief executive officer of the central bank division, said: “We had a positive return across all our investment areas. Falling interest rates led to a broad rise in the stock market.”

The third-quarter return is double the GPFG’s second-quarter return of 2.1%, while below the first-quarter gain of 6.3%.

Equity investments, which made up 71.4% of the fund at the end of September, produced a 4.5% return for the latest quarter, while fixed-income assets returned 4.2% and ended the quarter comprising 26.8% of the fund.

Investments in unlisted real estate, meanwhile, returned 0.8%, and unlisted renewable energy infrastructure – the smallest of the GPFG’s asset classes —made a positive 10.8% return in the three months.

Unlisted real estate makes up just 1.7% of the fund, and unlisted renewable energy infrastructure only comprises 0.1% of it.

The 10.8% return on green energy infrastructure comes after NBIM in August reported the asset class had suffered a -18% loss in the first half, then citing the higher cost of capital.

Overall, NBIM underperformed its benchmark index in the third quarter by 0.1 percentage point, the manager revealed.

Among other factors affecting the growth of the SWF in the third quarter, NBIM said the Norwegian krone had weakened against several major currencies – helping lift the fund’s value in domestic-unit terms by NOK191bn.

The fund also had petroleum revenue inflows of NOK99bn in those three months, NBIM said.

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Rachel is IPE's Nordic correspondent. She has long been a freelance writer, and over the years, has written for The Telegraph, The Independent, The Observer, AMWatch and elsewhere. In 2001, Rachel's personal finance book Kickstart Your Money was published by John Wiley & Sons.View full Profile

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