"Norway wealth fund could blacklist four major climate culprits", 1 March 2020

Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund will exclude four companies for their vast emissions of greenhouse gases, or at least put them on probation to force them to change...

The fund's ethics body is, separately, opening a new front, said Johan H. Andresen: investigating whether technology companies' tools are being used for "improper surveillance", with their makers held to account regardless of their intent.

The world's largest sovereign wealth, which has massive market influence because it owns 1.5% of the world's listed shares, operates under ethical guidelines set by parliament.

Andresen, chairman of the fund's Council on Ethics, said it had recommended the fund divest shares in the four polluters, after probing the oil, steel and concrete industries...

Companies to be excluded are not named until the fund has sold the shares, to avoid the stock falling in value beforehand...

The central bank typically follows the council's recommendations to censure companies but sometimes, rather than immediately excluding them, it puts them on a watch list to give them a set period of time to come up with a plan to significantly change their behaviour, or face exclusion...