Norway: Govt. pension fund drops 10 firms due to links to coal, engages with textile sector on protection of refugee workers in Turkey
"Norway's $900 billion fund drops 10 more firms with links to coal", 7 Mar 2017
Norway's central bank, which manages the country's $900 billion wealth fund, has excluded another 10 companies from its investment portfolio because they use or produce coal, it said on Tuesday, and another 26 are "at risk" of being dropped...The ten companies excluded on Tuesday were: CEZ, Eneva, Great River Energy [GREGY.UL], HK Electric Investments, Huidan Energy, Korea Electric Corp, Malakoff Corp, Otter Tail Corp , PGE and SDIC Power Holdings...The central bank also said it had put two companies under observation for potential exclusion in the future. These are NorthWestern Corp and Portland General Electric...But three environmental groups said the move did not go far enough, saying that the fund still had 26 billion crowns ($3.07 billion) in 32 companies that own coal mines or coal-fired power plants and 2 billion crowns in 15 companies that transport coal or build coal power stations, according to their own analysis...The CEO said that in 2016 the fund began a dialogue with 22 companies in which it owns shares that use Turkish textile firms in their supply chains.Slyngstad said this was because of concerns about the use of child labor and other human rights abuses following the influx of Syrian refugees in the country...