Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has revised the value of its UK property holdings just two months after a writedown of its portfolio.
Trond Grande, NBIM’s deputy chief executive, told UK media that it had marked up the value of its UK portfolio to a level close to where it was before the UK’s vote to leave the European Union in June.
The fund wrote down the value of its UK property holdings by 5% in August, citing market uncertainty.
The Government Pension Fund Global has significant exposure to UK property, with 16% of its NOK221bn (€23.6bn) real estate portfolio in London and 23% in the UK – more than twice its exposure to French property.
The sovereign fund bought a combined retail and office asset from Aberdeen Asset Management for £124m (€149m), as the UK manager was struggling with the liquidity of its flagship open-ended property fund.
In its second-quarter report, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) said the fund’s external valuers had decided against any changes to the UK portfolio’s value, as there was a shortage of data on the impact of Brexit.
But NBIM decided to writedown the values of its UK property assets by 5%.
