The Norwegian Finance Ministry this afternoon announced it set up an expert group to evaluate Norges Bank’s active management of the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) at the beginning of July, which is to report next spring.

The ministry said the group consisted of Rob Bauer, professor at the University of Maastricht; Charlotte Christiansen, professor at Aarhus University and Trond Døskeland, who is a professor at the Norwegian School of Management.

In its announcement, the ministry said it conducted regular reviews of the management of the GPFG, most recently in 2018 when an expert group consisting of Magnus Dahlquist and Bernt Arne Ødegaard prepared a report on the active management of the GPFG on the ministry’s behalf.

“In line with this, the ministry has initiated a new review, including setting up an expert group to assess the basis for the strategies that Norges Bank uses in the management of the fund and analyse results in the active management,” it said.

The panel will compile a report that will be published and discussed in the annual report on the Government Pension Fund [Norway’s overall sovereign wealth fund, which includes the smaller Government Pension Fund Norway], the ministry said, adding that the annual report would be presented in the spring of 2022.

Back in 2018, Dahlquist and Ødegaard concluded that the GPFG should continue undertaking active management of the fund and delegating assets to other active fund managers, emphasising that NBIM had generated strong historical relative results from listed equities, though its performance record on fixed income had been weak.

At the same time, Døskeland – along with Per Strömberg, professor at the Stockholm School of Economics – put together a separate report on the merits of the fund investing in private equity.

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