NEWS

(Bloomberg)  The biggest owner of stocks in the world tends not to look at the headline numbers provided by ESG ratings firms, and says only by digging into the underlying data does it find the information needed to guide portfolio decisions. “We very rarely, if ever, use the ratings numbers,” said Patrick du Plessis, the global head of risk monitoring at Norges Bank Investment Management.  

NBIM, whose $1.4 trillion portfolio makes it both the world’s biggest wealth fund and the No. 1 investor in publicly traded equities, this week unveiled a tougher stance on assessing environmental, social and governance risk. Using a pre-screening tool, the fund will exclude benchmark stocks that would otherwise have made it into its portfolio, based on a series of ESG tests.

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