Norway's finance minister Jens Stoltenberg said that Norway has suspended its ethical investing rules to avoid its $2.1tn oil fund being forced to sell out of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet due to their work for the Israeli government. Norway’s centre-left government pushed an urgent proposal through parliament on Tuesday, putting the work of the independent ethics council on hold. Mr Stoltenberg said the ethics council had planned soon to look into technology companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet, as well as those on a UN blacklist issued in July. The existing arrangement has involved the oil fund’s ethics council giving recommendations on whether to sell out of a specific company to Norway’s central bank, which houses the fund and takes the final decision on whether to divest. But we need to handle them better than we have done so far in the ethical guidelines.”The fund’s ethics council welcomed the review, adding that it had noted the “political disagreement” about companies connected to Israel and Gaza.
