NORWAY – Norges Bank Investment Management, which runs the 682.0 billion Norwegian crown (86.5 billion euro) Petroleum Fund on behalf of the Norwegian government, has issued new external active US equity mandates.

“Norges Bank Investment Management is today announcing new external active equity mandates for the Norwegian Government Petroleum Fund,” said NBIM on its website.

NBIM said the new mandates consist of sector mandates covering a range of different sectors in the US market, as well as core US small cap mandates. “Initial funding will range from 100 million dollars to 500 million dollars.”

It said it is looking to hire one or more managers to manage US Small Cap mandates – it was primarily looking to hire Core managers, but Small Cap Value and Small Cap Growth would also be considered.

It added that applications received before June 27 would be prioritised. Applications received after this date will be evaluated later in the year.

A recent report by Mercer Manager Advisory Services commissioned by the Norwegian Finance Ministry queried NBIM’s selection of external managers, adding that there is a high turnover of external managers.

But the report also praised NBIM for outperforming its benchmark in all of the five years since inception in 1998 and said it was on the way to becoming a ‘bone fide’ investment organisation” with an “ethos of responsibility and accountability”.

NBIM says that 40% of the fund is invested in global equities and that 31 mandates totalling 15 billion dollars are currently being managed by 16 different managers.

Further information is available on www.nbim.no. These searches are not being run on IPE-Quest.com