00:00Heidi, how strong are these numbers? What does it tell us about the exposure to the Sovereign
00:05Wealth Fund, to some of these tech names, how they've been positioning? What is your take from
00:09the numbers we've been seeing from the Sovereign Wealth Fund?
00:14Well, like you said, this is a really strong result for the fund, both on the first half
00:18year and especially then the second quarter. It's best in six years. And it does, of course,
00:23reflect the strong performance of the big tech stocks. The fund is heavily invested.
00:30All of its eight of its 10 biggest investments are in tech stocks. They have NVIDIA on top,
00:36Apple, Microsoft, all the big payers. So it does reflect the performance of these stocks
00:41mainly. And also Nikolai Tangen, the chief executive officer of the fund, he highlighted the Asian
00:47tech stocks this time. That has also helped driven profit.
00:52Heidi, one of the things that we've seen recently has been a big focus on European defense stocks.
00:59We've seen some volatility, but they have been relatively strong performers. Names like
01:03Rai Mittal at TKMS. We've been talking about that this morning. What's the latest in terms of this
01:08fund's view or ability to access the defense sector? Is that going to change? I understand
01:15parliament's looking at this right now. Yes, of course, this fund is guided by ethical guidelines
01:23set by the Norwegian parliament. It's a sovereign wealth fund. So it's a democratically decided
01:29guidelines on the ethical front. And those have been put on pause. There's a review going on right
01:36now. And we have finance minister Jens Stoltenberg, the previous NATO secretary general. He has been
01:43talking quite favorably about changing the guidelines that are currently preventing the
01:48fund in investing in some large defense companies who are producing components to nuclear materials.
01:54It's the nuclear element that is currently prohibiting the fund from investment investing in these
02:00companies. So this is a big debate going on right now. And we will probably see the results of this
02:07debate this fall or late this year. So that's going to be a big, big change coming if they do
02:14decide
02:14they need, they need the majority in the Norwegian parliament to change these rules.
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