Norwegian sovereign wealth fund selling Russian assets worth over $3 bln

OSLO. Feb 28 (Interfax) - Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, has made the decision to sell all its Russian assets in support of Ukraine.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), part of the Norwegian Central Bank, which manages the global investment fund, should immediately freeze all new investments in Russia and begin selling the assets that it has, the Norwegian government said in a statement.

"The Russian attack on Ukraine has put the safety of Europe under threat in a way that we haven't seen since the Second World War. This challenges our values, norms, and principles, upon which democratic societies are based," Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said.

NBIM CEO Nicolai Tangen said last week that in his opinion, selling Russian assets was a bad idea at the moment.

"The Moscow Exchange has fallen markedly in recent days, and if we sell our assets now, Russian oligarchs will be able to buy them for cheap," Tangen said in an interview with local media.

According to the fund's financial statement for 2020, it had at that moment shares in almost 50 Russian companies worth around $2.5 billion in total, including Alrosa , Bank Saint Petersburg , Gazprom, EN+ , Etalon Group, Globaltrans Investment, LSR Group, Rosseti Centre , Lukoil , Lenta , MD Medical Group , Magnit , Sberbank , Sollers , Sistema , TCS Group , X5 Retail Group, and others. The fund also had in its portfolio at the end of 2020 OFZ bonds worth approximately $0.8 billion, around a third as much as at its peak in 2013. Russian assets account for 0.2% of the fund's assets. It is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. It has not yet released a financial statement for 2021.