Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which runs Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), and Sweden’s largest pension fund AP7, have claimed a victory in the investor struggle to recoup losses from the 2023 US banking crisis.
As co-lead plaintiffs in a class action related to the collapse of US niche bank Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), NBIM and AP7 reached a $224.5m (€200m) settlement in principle with SVB’s former external auditor KPMG, after the bank’s March 2023 collapse.
NBIM CEO Nicolai Tangen described the legal deal as an “important first step toward recovering investor losses from one of the largest bank failures in US history”.
But there is some way to go for Nordic investors – including Alecta – who lost millions in the sorry episode in early 2023, which saw a string of US specialist banks go to the wall, weakened by bond losses as interest rates climbed, and then hit by depositor runs.
In October, a key commission looking into the GPFG’s ethical framework published its report. The official panel led by former Norwegian central bank governor Svein Gjedrem proposed a number of changes, including allowing the NOK21.2trn (€2.0trn) fund to invest in nuclear weapons manufacturers – a switch that could bring several large engineering stocks back into the SWF’s portfolio.
In Sweden, the country’s financial watchdog has moved to bring occupational pension provider SH Pension back into line with its asset allocation. The FSA launched an official investigation into the pension fund in relation to its continued heavy weighting to unlisted assets.
The authority said the regulatory framework for occupational pensions aimed to ensure providers could meet their pension commitments, saying rules were there to protect current and future pensioners.
The legal wrangle between Sweden’s Fund Selection Agency and premium pension fund provider Indecap continues, with the latter now vowing to appeal an Administrative Court ruling that the agency’s procurement of actively managed global equity funds had been conducted correctly.
According to Swedish news service Pensionsnyheterna, the court has yet to decide whether to give the challenger leave to appeal. In the meantime, the new funds procured by the FTN cannot be added to the premium pension funds platform.
Items to note:
- Research by Danish website followmymoney.org highlighted – around the time of the US mid-term elections – that Danish pension funds had nearly DKK1trn (€130bn) invested in US companies whose political action committees (PACs) channelled 60% of election contributions to Republican candidates.
- The IPE Conference & Awards 2026 is taking place on 2 December at the Royal College of Physicians & Natural History Museum in London.
Rachel Fixsen
Nordic and Netherlands Correspondent
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