On February 13, Ida Wolden Bache, Governor of Norges Bank, gave her annual address to the institution's supervisory board in Oslo. In a speech lasting around 30 minutes, she spoke of the turbulence of the past five years, which has not, however, affected the growth of Norway's enormous pension fund, whose value has doubled over this period to almost 20,000 billion Norwegian kroner (€1,740 billion).

On this occasion, Bache said that the fund, which is financed by revenues from oil and gas production, has been governed by ethical rules since 2004. These have prevented it from investing in companies such as Airbus, Boeing, BAE Systems, or Safran, which contribute to the manufacture of nuclear weapons. But "we have to be open to the possibility that what is considered ethically acceptable may change, at a time when the world is once again marked by military rearmament and growing tensions between countries," Bache said, echoing the debate driving the Norwegian Parliament responsible for establishing these ethical rules.

The Norwegian pension fund is by far the largest, but not the only one to reconsider its stance on the defense industry. In Scandinavia, acquiring assets in arms companies was previously considered unthinkable by most players in the sector, as was investing in tobacco, pornography, alcohol, gambling and non-medical cannabis, as the Swedish local authority pension fund KPA continues to state on its website. The geopolitical context and the rearmament of Europe are moving the lines.

You have 71.3% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.