Read: Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund demands more diversity
One of the world’s biggest investment groups will start to vote against companies with fewer than two women on the board this year.
Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund said it would vote against directors on board nomination committees at such companies. It said it wanted them to set gender diversity targets if they had less than 30 per cent women on their boards.
“What we want to see is better representation of women on the boards,” Carine Smith Ihenacho, the fund’s chief governance and compliance officer, said. “Diversity is good for the board because it brings better perspective, it is better for decision making and increasingly important for the legitimacy of companies.”
The fund, which takes some of the country’s oil revenues and invests them for future generations of Norwegians, typically owns about 1.5 per cent of all listed shares worldwide.