Norwegian Ministry of Finance appointed a group of three international experts to review Norges Bank's management of the 4.397 trillion Norwegian kroner ($736 billion) Government Pension Fund Global, Oslo, to present to Parliament in the spring, according to a news release from the ministry.
The three appointed are Andrew Ang, the Ann F. Kaplan professor of business at Columbia Business School; Michael Brandt, Kalman J. Cohen Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University; and David Denison, former president and CEO of the C$188.9 billion (US$182.5 billion) Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto.
The review will focus on the sovereign wealth fund's active management practices and look for ways to improve expected return and risk relative to benchmarks set by the ministry. It will include investment opportunities both within and outside GPFG's current investment universe, according to the news release. The fund had an asset allocation of 63.4% equity, 35.7% fixed income and 0.9% real estate, as of June 30.
The Ministry of Finance in 2009 said it planned to conduct reviews of active management of the sovereign wealth fund at the beginning of each term of Parliament.
Mr. Ang was part of a trio that evaluated the active management in 2009, and led to a recommendation of implementing risk factor investing, which was initiated in part last year.
Messrs. Ang and Brandt declined to comment, and efforts to reach Mr. Denison were unsuccessful.
