Norway’s SWF urged to use unlisted infrastructure

The Norwegian government has been urged to allow its $1 trillion national wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) to invest in unlisted infrastructure equity.

The call came in an open letter to the Norwegian finance minister from the EDHEC Infrastructure Institute, which says that the creation of indices for unlisted infrastructure addresses concerns over transparency and performance measurement. At present, the GPFG is prohibited by the Norwegian government from investing in private equity. Frederic Blanc-Brude, director at EDHEC said: “The unlisted infrastructure sector is evolving rapidly to become more transparent and better benchmarked, so that large institutional investors such as GPFG will now be able to approach it on a completely different basis.”

The GPFG said that it would consider investing in unlisted infrastructure in the renewable energy sector if the same transparency, return and risk requirements that apply to other investments in the GPFG could be met. The EDHEC Infrastructure Institute said that it has now created the largest database of infrastructure investment data in the world, covering hundreds of companies over the past two decades.