The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has been asked to sell its £5.7bn investment in housebuilders that profited from dangerous homes in Britain if they do not compensate victims.
Grenfell survivors and cladding campaigners have written to Nicolai Tangen, the boss of the £1tn Norges Bank Investment Management, asking him to “leverage its position as major shareholder” to push 11 firms to fix fire-safety defects and compensate victims of the Grenfell tragedy.
NBIM should “divest its holdings in these firms if they fail to do so”, it adds.
The action has been backed by housing secretary Michael Gove.
The companies include Barratt, in which NBIM has a £17bn holding, Taylor Wimpey (1.4bn), Lendlease (£488m), Crest Nicholson (£345m), Persimmon (£200m), Berkeley (£108m), Bellway (£93m) and Vistry (£71m).
Other companies on the list include Kingspan (£308m), Arconic (£121m) and Saint-Gobain (£829m).
In the past decade, NBIM has offloaded stock from almost 370 companies over social and environmental issues. It owns, on average, 1.4% of every listed company in the world and 2.5% of every European stock.
