By Dominic Chopping

Norway's trillion-dollar sovereign-wealth fund, the world's largest, returned 0.1% in the third quarter, equivalent to a gain of 31 billion kroner ($3.7 billion).

Norges Bank Investment Management, the arm of the central bank that manages the sovereign-wealth fund, commonly known as the oil fund, said Thursday that the fund's return was 0.25 percentage point higher than the return on the benchmark index.

"The equity market continued to strengthen toward August, before dipping slightly in the second half of the quarter," Trond Grande, deputy chief executive of NBIM, said.

"However, the fund has achieved somewhat higher returns than the market, particularly in our equity investments," Mr. Grande said.

The krone depreciated against several of the main currencies during the quarter, which increased the value of the fund by NOK22 billion, NBIM said. Some NOK52 billion was withdrawn from the fund during the quarter.

The fund had a market value of NOK11.674 trillion ($1.405 trillion) as of Sept. 30, and was 71.5% invested in equities, 25.9% in fixed income, 2.5% in unlisted real estate, and 0.1% in unlisted renewable energy infrastructure.

Equity investments made a negative return of 0.1% in the quarter, unlisted real-estate investments returned 3.6%, and fixed-income investments returned 0.1%, NBIM said.

Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 21, 2021 04:46 ET (08:46 GMT)

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