After posting a 1.6% loss in the first quarter, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund—Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global—rebounded to post a 5.7% return during the first half of the year to raise its asset value to 19.59 trillion kroner ($1.92 trillion) as of June 30. The results, led by unlisted infrastructure investments and equities, were 0.05 percentage points shy of the fund benchmark’s return.
The pension fund’s unlisted infrastructure investments, following a 1.23% return for the first quarter, gained 8.1% in the second quarter, producing a 9.43% return for the first half, making it the GPFG’s top-performing asset class during the period.
Equity investments, which made up 70.6% of the portfolio, were the fund’s second-best performer, earning 6.73%; they also had the highest returns during the second quarter, rallying to an 8.45% gain following a 1.59% loss the previous quarter. The equity gains were led by the financial, telecom and utility sectors, which were slightly offset by a 2.9% loss from health care sector investments.
Financial equities, which have the second-highest portfolio weighting at 17%, produced a 16.5% return in the first half of the year.
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“European banks made the greatest contribution to this return, driven by expectations of increased public expenditure and further healthy profitability,” the GPFG wrote in its first-half report.
Telecommunications investments earned 13.3% during the period and accounted for 2.9% of the fund’s equity assets. The pension fund attributed the strong gain to “stable revenue streams, expectations of consolidation in Europe, and new sources of revenue in artificial intelligence.”
Its utilities holdings, which have the smallest allocation among these sectors at 2.5%, gained 12.4% over the first six months of 2025. The report credited the performance to positive returns from power producers and distributors, which it attributed in part due to investors looking for more stable investments amid falling oil and gas prices.
Aside from its health care losses—which the fund’s investment manager, Norges Bank Investment Management, blamed on uncertainty over U.S. health care policy—consumer discretionary and real estate stocks were the next-worst performers, returning 1.5% and 1.9%, respectively.
The GPFG’s asset allocation at the end of June was 70.6% equities, 27.1% fixed income, 1.9% unlisted real estate and 0.4% unlisted renewable energy infrastructure.
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Tags: investment returns, Norway Government Pension Fund Global, sovereign wealth funds
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