NEWS

Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund, the world’s largest, agreed to buy stakes in three prime U.S. office buildings for about $1.5 billion, extending a real estate shopping spree as it seeks higher-yielding assets.

Affiliates of Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the Norwegian government’s global pension fund, is acquiring 45 percent interests the buildings from Boston Properties Inc., the seller said yesterday in a statement. The properties are 601 Lexington Ave. in New York and the Atlantic Wharf Office Building and 100 Federal Street in Boston.

The fund has been expanding its holdings of high-quality properties in coastal cities. Norway’s $880 billion wealth fund formed a real estate group in July that will invest almost $10 billion a year over the next three years. The fund, whose holdings include properties on London’s Regent Street and Paris’s Avenue des Champs-Elysees, is required to have as much as 5 percent of its assets in real estate.

Norges Bank’s press office didn’t immediately respond to an an e-mail sent after regular business hours in Oslo yesterday.

The fund earlier this month agreed to buy a 49.9 percent stake in San Francisco’s Orrick Building, also known as Foundry Square II, through a venture with asset manager TIAA-CREF. Last year, it bought a 45 percent stake in in New York’s Times Square Tower from Boston Properties, the largest U.S. office real estate investment trust.