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• Norway Proposes to Exclude Tobacco From Wealth Fund (Update1) 

Norway proposed excluding tobacco producers as part of an overhaul of ethical guidelines for its $310 billion sovereign wealth fund.

“There’s no healthy way to use tobacco,” Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said today at a press conference in Oslo, without naming specific companies. “There has notably been a lot of attention directed at how tobacco companies target developing countries.” . . .

At the end of 2008, the fund owned shares in tobacco companies including Imperial Tobacco Group Plc, British American Tobacco Plc, Europe’s largest cigarette maker, as well as in Swedish Match AB and in Philip Morris International Inc.

“We’ll go through all the companies in the portfolio and slowly liquidate our positions,” Halvorsen said.

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