The fourth Swedish national pension fund leaves a large number of försvarsbolag

Since the turn of the year the national pension funds, those who manage the public pension capital, a series of new rules to relate to their investments.

Among them is a new sustainability requirements, which says that the funds should ”pay particular attention” at the sustainability, without compromising on the main objective of their business – to get the pension to grow.

now done away with the holding of all the companies linked to the kärnvapenproduktion. In total there are 45 companies turns many from the american defense industry.

and with that we have a new legislation in place now where you have expressed a higher ambition relating to sustainability issues, we had reason to look a little more closely at this and do a revaluation, " says Niklas Ekvall, the ceo of the Fourth AP fund, to DN.

there are försvarsjättar as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the French Airbus. Niklas Ekwall don't want to give the full list of the companies they pull out of but describe it as it applies to ”large parts of the US defence industry”.

– you Should only have investerarglasögonen on, it is so clearly a big part of an important sector of the u.s. stock market. Historically, it has delivered good returns and relatively low volatility.

– With the discussions that are in the world, it is also a sector with a fairly full order books and in the sense of good future prospects. This decision is made on the basis of a long-term ethical and sustainable perspective.

– We have a variety of different forms of investment in the fund. In this case, applies primarily to the global equities portfolio and then there will be a reweighting to the other sectors in the portfolio, " says Niklas Ekvall.

One of the companies the state pension fund completes its possession is försvarsjätten Raytheon, which will deliver the u.s. team Patriot to Sweden.

the Definition of a kärnvapenbolag varies depending on who you ask. The fourth AP-fund drew the line at ”companies with operations in the modernisation and upgrading of nuclear weapons or customized components for these weapons systems”.

" this is not a position against the whole of the defence industry, but it is against nuclear weapons. So it is the companies which have any part of its activities related to the development of the military nuclear arsenal, " says Niklas Ekvall.

in Addition to kärnvapenbolagen owns the fund no longer shares in the company where the oil sands represent more than 20 per cent of the turnover. Also, in accordance with the new sustainability goal.