World’s largest sovereign wealth fund posts $76 billion in quarterly profit as interest rates fall

Norway’s gigantic sovereign wealth fund on Tuesday reported third-quarter profit of 835 billion Norwegian kroner ($76.3 billion), citing a stock market boost from falling interest rates.

The so-called Government Pension Fund Global, one of the world’s largest investors, said it had a value of 18.870 trillion kroner at the end of September.

The fund’s overall return for the quarter was 4.4%, which was 0.1 percentage points lower than the return on its benchmark index.

“We had a positive return across all our investment areas. Falling interest rates led to a broad rise in the stock market,” Trond Grande, deputy CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said in a statement.

The results come shortly after Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, warned that elevated uncertainty and a “completely different geopolitical situation” meant there were now more risks to global stocks.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, was established in the 1990s to invest the surplus revenues of the country’s oil and gas sector. To date, the fund has put money in more than 8,760 companies in 71 countries around the world.

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