Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, has said it is selling its investments in 11 Israeli companies, following revelations that it had invested in an Israeli jet engine maker even as the conflict in Gaza raged on, AFP reports.
“These measures were taken in response to extraordinary circumstances. The situation in Gaza is a serious humanitarian crisis. We are invested in companies that operate in a country at war, and conditions in the West Bank and Gaza have recently worsened,” said Nicolai Tangen, chief of Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the fund.
“The situation in Gaza is a serious humanitarian crisis. We are invested in companies that operate in a country at war, and conditions in the West Bank and Gaza have recently worsened,” Tangen said in a statement.
He said the move would reduce the number of Israeli companies the fund’s Council of Ethics needed to supervise.
NBIM said it had investments in 61 Israeli companies at the end of the first six months of this year, 11 of which were not in its “equity benchmark index” —which is set by the finance ministry and used to gauge the wealth fund’s performance.
NBIM added that it had decided last week that “all investments in Israeli companies that are not in the equity benchmark index will be sold as soon as possible”.
