Norway’s largest private pension fund has excluded two defense companies from its portfolio, citing their ties to the Israeli military and the war in Gaza.
KLP Pension, which oversees about $114 billion, said in a statement on Monday that it won’t invest in Oshkosh Corp. Or ThyssenKrupp AG because they sell weapons to the Israeli military.
The fund said the decision followed a report from United Nations last June that identified companies supplying the Israel Defense Forces with weapons that ended up being deployed in Gaza. After talks with the companies, KLP said it concluded they were “contravening” the fund’s investment guidelines.
“We have therefore decided to exclude them from our investment universe,” Kiran Aziz, head of responsible investments at KLP Kapitalforvaltning, said in the statement. Before June 16, KLP held shares worth about 19 million kroner ($1.8 million) in Oshkosh and roughly 10 million kroner ($1 million) in ThyssenKrupp.
Spokespeople for Oshkosh and ThyssenKrupp didn’t respond to a request for comment sent outside regular office hours.
Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and sparking a war in Gaza that has dragged on for almost 20 months. More than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, while large parts of the territory have been reduced to rubble.
KLP’s decision feeds into a broader campaign by human rights activists urging financial firms and consumers to either divest from or boycott companies linked to Israel. In Norway, that campaign has singled out Norges Bank Investment Management, the country’s $1.9 trillion sovereign wealth fund, which has holdings in hundreds of Israeli companies. The wealth fund, the world’s largest, has previously excluded companies due to their links to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
KLP cited guidance from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a group of UN experts, which have said that companies selling weapons, parts, components or ammunition to Israeli forces risk becoming complicit in serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli government has denied the charges, saying its conduct in the conflict has been in line with international law.
KLP said its investment guidelines prevent it from owning stakes in companies that are involved in the “sale of weapons to states in armed conflicts that use the weapons in ways that represent serious and systematic breaches of international law governing the conflicts.”
Companies are expected to “exercise due diligence in order to avoid complicity in violations of fundamental human rights and humanitarian law,” Aziz said.
KLP excluded Caterpillar Inc. Last year on similar grounds.
