NORWAY – The Norwegian Petroleum Fund says it funded two new fixed income and three new equities mandates in the second quarter.

Capital was transferred to Barclays Global Investors and PanAgora Asset Management, who were awarded specialist US fixed income briefs.

And cash was transferred to regional equities mandates at APS Asset Management, Fidelity Pensions Management and Schroder Investment Management.

The fund’s fixed income portfolio is worth NOK711.5bn, with about 90% of it managed internally. Just under 60% of the NOK472.4bn equities portfolio was managed internally.

The fund made a second-quarter return on investments of 3.83% - 0.18 percentage points above benchmark. The overall first-half return of 4.91% beat the benchmark by 0.33 percentage points. Equities and fixed income returned 4.87% and 3.10% in the quarter respectively.

The market value of the fund has risen to NOK1.18trn (€147bn) - an increase of NOK93.8bn in the quarter.

This was the result of a NOK42.5bn positive return and NOK55.1bn in new capital. The stronger krone reduced the value of the fund by NOK3.8bn.

At the end of the second quarter, 22% of the fund was managed by external managers. Costs associated with external managers – who are mostly active - accounted for 63% of total management costs.