Norway US$1.8 trillion fund returns 13% on gains in US tech stocks

Norway’s US$1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund returned 13 per cent, or US$222 billion, last year, driven by a booming US technology sector.

Norges Bank Investment Management – the official name of the fund –  saw investments in equities gain 18 per cent in 2024, it said in a statement Wednesday. The fund missed the benchmark it measures itself against by 45 basis points, it said.

“The American technology stocks in particular performed very well,” chief executive officer Nicolai Tangen said in the statement.

Founded in the early 1990s, NBIM is tasked with thinking long-term and investing Norway’s oil and gas revenues abroad. Having started with seed capital of about US$300 million, the fund is today the world’s biggest single owner of equities, with the bulk of its capital in publicly listed equities. It measures itself against a bespoke benchmark based on the FTSE Global All Cap Index for equities and Bloomberg Barclays indexes for fixed income. BLOOMBERG