According to the semi-annual report released by the Norwegian government's global pension fund on Aug. 17, the fund lost 14.4% in the first six months of 2022, a loss of 1.68 trillion Norwegian kroner, or 1.17 trillion yuan. The "biggest contributor" was Meta (Facebook), which lost 38 billion Norwegian kroner (26.5 billion yuan) for the fund in half a year.

The top 10 companies that contribute to the fund

The Norwegian global government pension fund, operated by the investment management of the Norwegian Central Bank, is a Norwegian sovereign wealth management fund. Although there is the word "pension" in the fund, the fund does not bear the usual pension expenditure, so it cannot be regarded as a pension fund. The income derived from oil exploration is also known as the Petroleum Fund (The Oil Fund). The operators behind the Norwegian global government pension fund, Norwegian Central Bank Investment Management and Canadian pension fund investment company CPPIB, are considered by evaluation institutions to be the most transparent large institutional investors in the world.

However, the Norwegian global government pension fund still exceeded the benchmark by 1.14 percentage points in the first half of 2022, which was reported to the Norwegian Ministry of Finance as a reference for fund performance.

The Norwegian central bank investment management CEO Nicolai Tangen said the market faced problems such as rising interest rates, high inflation and European war in the first half of the year. Overall, stock investment fell by 17%. Technology stocks took the lead, falling 28%. With the exception of energy, stocks are falling in almost every industry. The energy sector rose 13% in the first half of the year. Crude oil, natural gas, refining and other industries rose significantly, Tangen further pointed out.

Over the same period, the Norwegian krona depreciated against several major currencies. As a result, overseas assets denominated in Norwegian kroner have risen slightly, buffering the fund's Norwegian kroner-denominated losses.

By the end of June 2022, the top 20 stocks of the Norwegian government's global pension fund equity investments were Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Alphabet, Amazon.Com Inc, Nestl é, Roche Holdings, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, Shell, Tesla, Inc., Meta, AstraZeneca PLC, Novo-Nordisk A/S, UnitedHealth Group Inc, Novartis AG, Asmar, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson, Exxon Mobil Corp, Samsung Electronics, NVIDIA Corp. Among them, the market value of the fund's stake in Apple Inc is as high as 204.5 billion Norwegian kroner (about 142.8 billion yuan).

The size of the fund was 11.657 trillion Norwegian kroner at the end of June 2022. According to the website of the investment management company of the Norwegian central bank, the fund of 12.2601 trillion Norwegian kroner has rebounded from the end of the second quarter.

Bombard the super-high pay of executives of listed companies

The Norwegian government's global pension fund lambasted the huge pay of executives, according to the Financial Times. Nicolai Tangen said in an interview that it is particularly intolerable for companies with mediocre performance but incredible pay for senior executives. He said he would target companies whose performance does not match executive pay, companies with opaque pay distribution plans or companies that lack long-term consideration in pay design.

"We are in an inflationary environment. The performance of many companies is quite mediocre. In this case, executive compensation is very generous. Companies (executives) are greedy than ever before. To some extent, this dilutes the gains available to shareholders. On average, the Norwegian government's global pension fund owns 1.5 per cent of almost all listed companies in the world (based on a simple comparison between the market capitalization of the fund and the total market capitalization of global listed companies, "Tangen said. The fund voted against IBM, Intel Corp and Apple Inc in the latest shareholder vote, citing a mismatch between the years of high pay of IBM executives and the company's performance. The fund also voted against GE because of the complexity and lack of transparency in the design of executive pay.

Increase these Chinese companies in the second quarter.

Through cooperation with traders, Norway's central bank investment management accounted for about 4.5% of its total stock investment in mainland Chinese companies as of the end of June 2022.

With the disclosure of the report of listed companies, we have also found the presence of the Norwegian Central Bank among the top ten tradable shareholders of eight listed companies. So far, the Norwegian central bank has appeared in Deye shares, Hongfa shares, Shengyi Technology, Qiming Star, Red Flag chain, Lizhu Group, East China Pharmaceuticals, North Motorola Hi-Tech.

Of the eight companies that have been disclosed, the Norwegian central bank has either become one of the top 10 tradable shareholders or increased its holdings on the basis of the previous quarter. Among them, the larger increase includes Shengyi Technology, which held 8.5299 million shares at the end of last quarter, increasing its holdings by 14.2661 million shares, or more than 100%.

The Norwegian central bank is on the list of the top 10 tradable shareholders of these A shares.

According to the data at the end of 2021, the top 10 positions of Norwegian government pension funds in China are Tencent, BABA, Meituan, China Construction Bank Corporation Guizhou Moutai, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, Ping An Insurance, JD.com and Yao Ming Biotechnology.

The world's largest pension fund is also losing money.

The world's largest pension fund also lost money in a super-complex market in 2022.

The Japanese government pension investment fund, GPIF, the world's largest pension fund, lost money in the second quarter of 2022 (the first quarter of fiscal year 2022). It was also GPIF's worst quarter in the past two years.

According to a research report from the China Securities Investment Fund Association, the Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund (Government Pension Investment Fund,GPIF), established in 2006, has become a special investment management agency for public pensions in Japan, which invests the balance of pension contributions as reserve assets to make up for the gap in pension income and expenditure in the future.

GPIF2022 lost 1.9% or 187.857 billion yuan in the second quarter of the year. After the net worth of the fund has shrunk, the size of the fund is 193.01 trillion yen (9.67 trillion yuan). According to different asset classes, Japanese stocks in the portfolio fell 3.7 per cent and overseas stocks fell 5.4 per cent. Japan's domestic debt assets fell 1.3% in the second quarter, while overseas bonds yielded 2.7% over the same period. Part of the reason is the appreciation of the dollar against the yen, and overseas bonds are partly denominated in dollars.

About half of GPIF's assets are invested overseas. Because overseas assets are mostly denominated in US dollars. The appreciation of the dollar against the yen moderated the decline in assets. MiyazakiHayao, president of GPIF, said that along with the inflation process in major economies, the world's major stock index fell as major central banks began to tighten.

Between April and June, both the MSCI all-country World Index and the S & P 500 fell 16 per cent. The East Stock Exchange's Topix index fell 3.9%, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose 67 basis points. Yields on Japanese government bonds have not changed much.

Because half of the assets in GPIF's portfolio are overseas assets and half are exchange rate sensitive assets, fluctuations in overseas markets and changes in exchange rates will affect portfolio performance. Apart from GPIF, many public pensions in the United States are also doomed. America's largest public employee pension fund recorded its worst performance since 2009.