An era of very low returns is here. Markets riskier than before: Nicolai Tangen
Norges Bank Investment Management, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. In India, it has over $30 billion parked in companies ranging from HDFC Bank, Reliance, ICICI Bank, Airtel, Infosys and TCS to Zomato, Nykaa and DMart. The CEO of the largest single investor in the world also hosts the popular In Good Company podcast with global industry leaders. A former chef, Russian translator and intelligence man, Tangen told Arijit Barman in an interview in Davos that the world is in the grip of unprecedented volatility. Edited excerpts:
Nearly a third of your assets are in Europe. With Europe slowing and generating poor returns, are you looking to diversify even more in the US, Asia, maybe India, a lot more than before? We are linked to indices. So when the value of a market increases, we typically park more money there. We now have more than 50% of our $1.7 trillion in the US. With India becoming more important, the value of our Indian investments has also gone up. We have roughly 1.8% of our fund now in India. With more than $30 billion invested in India-double of what we did five-eight years ago-both China and India exposure is not too dissimilar. Our portfolio is predominantly public markets but we have some fixed-income assets too. Our biggest holding in India is HDFC Bank, number 2 is Reliance.
After that, it’s ICICI Bank, Airtel and Infosys. We also have TCS and some of the new tech companies. So, our portfolio is very diversified.
How does India look from your vantage point? We are seeing a lot of great
