Word: slyngstad
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...less productive workers with fewer skills. While a current employer may benefit from their cheap labor, future employers will lose out. For Norway's fund, it's a concern - both ethically and economically - that "the action of one company may influence the profitability of another," says Yngve Slyngstad, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, the part of Norway's central bank that runs the fund...
...Slyngstad's team of 188, which includes 11 people focused solely on corporate governance issues, consciously leverages the fund's rights as a major shareholder. Last year, the fund contacted several companies in its portfolio with operations in India's agricultural sector, urging better controls on child labor. Similarly, talks are ongoing with firms in Brazil's mining and steel industries. The fund has also sent to the boards of about 30 firms a document it published with the help of UNICEF and Save the Children, setting out its expectations regarding children's rights...
...labor rights in its business and its supplier chain, the Ministry excluded Wal-Mart from the fund in May 2006. (The retailer said the claims were based on inaccurate and outdated information.) Such exclusions are "in one sense, an admission of defeat of the corporate governance effort," says Slyngstad. "When you're no longer an owner, you no longer have influence...
...Whatever the fund's well-meaning guidelines, policing them across such a sprawling portfolio is ultimately impractical. "Is any one of these 7,000 companies behaving in ways that you would not be comfortable with?" asks Slyngstad. "Yes, of course." But his team, which is spread between Oslo, London, Shanghai and New York City, tries to use its heft strategically - for example, to pressure firms in a sector like Brazilian mining, in which exploitation of child labor persists. Nor will the environmentally unfriendly origins of the fund's cash prevent it from pressing for better ecological standards. Last year...
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