By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s wealth fund will continue to raise environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues with the companies it is invested in, including with Big Tech, despite a backlash against ESG, a top fund official said on Thursday.
In recent months, U.S. conservative activists have spoken out against discussing issues such as diversity and climate change in corporate boardrooms.
That move has intensified with the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made rolling back federal policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a priority of his first weeks in the White House.
“We are in the middle of an ESG backlash: it impacts the market, it impacts companies, it impacts investors,” Carine Smith Ihenacho, the $1.8 trillion fund’s Chief Governance and Compliance Officer, told a press conference.
“But for us, ESG … has always been about financial materiality, about long-term value creation.
“That’s the dialogue we have with the companies, that’s the dialogue we will continue to have with … companies.”
This included the fund’s dialogue with large tech firms, she later told Reuters.
“We had dialogues on issues around misinformation, about the use of their products, about responsible use of AI, and I believe they still would like to have a good relationship with their investors,” she said in an interview.
The fund is invested in close to 9,000 companies globally. Nine out of the 10 largest equity holdings in the fund’s portfolio are tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia.
Tech stocks accounted for 19% of the fund’s total investments at the end of 2024, according to fund data.
While the fund was a minority shareholder in large tech companies, and thus had to approach its relations with them with “some humility”, it had good access and overall a good dialogue with them, she said.
“We have had a particular dialogue, and we will continue to have a dialogue, around children and safety online. We will continue to have that (discussion) with big tech companies,” she said.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouché in Oslo; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
