NEWS

(Bloomberg) — The head of Norway’s $1.4 trillion wealth fund said he expects a lengthy period of weakness in financial markets and warned that inflation could be the most significant challenge ahead. Nicolai Tangen, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Management, told Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that after achieving an average rate of return of 6% for a quarter century, the fund is now preparing for “a decade of lower returns.”

 “It might even turn negative,” the paper quoted him as saying in an interview. “We just have to accept that. The future will be less attractive for us than the past.” Tangen said the “biggest potential problem” for the fund — the world’s biggest owner of publicly traded stocks — is inflation and predicted surging prices could have “far more serious consequences than is currently generally assumed.”

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