Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, Oslo, returned 7.6% in 2014, the pension fund announced Friday.
Assets rose roughly 28% in the year to 6.4 trillion Norwegian kroner ($855 billion).
The top performer was real estate, which returned 10.4%, followed by equities at 7.9% and fixed income at 6.9%.
“2014 was a good year for the GPFG with positive results for all its asset classes,” said Yngve Slyngstad, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, in a news release. “Strong stock markets in the first half of the year and falling yields made a positive contribution to the results.” NBIM manages the pension fund.
Despite the positive results, the pension fund's equity and fixed-income allocations underperformed their benchmarks by roughly 80 basis points.
For real estate, Norges Bank said it made a number of new commitments during the year and established a real estate leader group in October to support its expansion in the asset class.
At the end of 2014, the pension fund had an asset allocation of 61.3% equity, 36.5% fixed income and 2.2% real estate.
The pension fund's regional asset allocation as of Dec. 31 was 39.3% Europe, 38.9% North America, 15.5% Asia, 2.3% Latin America, 2.1% Oceania, 1% internal organizations, 0.7% Africa and the remainder in the Middle East.
