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[la forge] 18/4/2018 14:01

Engie Eur1 (EU: GSZ)
Intraday Chart of the Action

Today: Wednesday 18 April 2018
More charts of the Engie Eur1 Stock Exchange
(CercleFinance.com) - Engie and its investment partner Meridiam have been selected by the Regulatory Commission of Electricity Sector (CRSE) in Senegal as a preferred bidder in a call for tenders launched last October for 2 solar projects photovoltaics, representing a total power of 60 megawatts (MW), it was learned this Wednesday afternoon.

These two projects are part of the 'Scaling Solar' initiative, jointly carried out by the Senegalese authorities and the International Finance Corporation (IFC, member of the World Bank Group) in Senegal. They are located in Kahone, in the region of Kaolack and in Touba-Kaël, in the region of Diourbel.

Engie and Meridiam will each hold a 40% interest in the project company. The Senegalese sovereign fund, FONSIS, will also be a 20% shareholder.

The construction and operation of the plants will be directed and executed by Engie.

[sarkasm] 13/3/2018 19:12

Tuesday 13 March 2018 6:23pm
London beats New York as top real estate investment destination for Norway's massive sovereign wealth fund
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Lucy White
I cover private equity, asset management and financial regulation for City A.M. [..] Show more
BRITAIN-CHRISTMAS
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, co-owns Regent Street (Source: Getty)

London has overtaken New York as the top real estate investment spot for Norway's massive $1 trillion (£715bn) sovereign wealth fund.

The fund, which is one of the biggest investors in the UK and co-owns Regent Street, bought almost £200m worth of London property last year in partnership with the Queen's Crown Estate.

These included a 25 per cent stake 10 Piccadilly worth £32.3m, a 25 per cent stake in 263-269 Oxford Street and 1-4 Princes Street for £30m, and 25 per cent of 20 Air Street for £112.5m.

Read more: London real estate nears record year: Investment in the capital's commercial property set to top £20bn

At the end of 2017, London accounted for 22.8 per cent of Norway's Global Government Pension Fund's private real estate investment followed by New York at 21.5 per cent and Paris at 19.1 per cent.

“A total of 81 per cent of all office investment transactions in central London were purchased by overseas investors in 2017," said Chris Brett of real estate investment giant CBRE.

"London will continue to attract capital from a diverse range of global investors. We expect 2018 to once again be driven by Asian and European investment. We also anticipate strong inflows from Israeli institutions and private Middle Eastern investors.”

Although the Norwegian fund, managed by Norges Bank, witnessed "some weakness" in UK occupier activity, it promised to remain committed to the UK.

Read more: Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, buys three London prime properties in a £120m partnership with the Crown Estate

It added that office occupancy levels in London remained relatively stable – vacancy rates in the City and Docklands rose to six and eight percent respectively, but the West End and Southbank each saw slight declines in vacancies.

The fund owned 179 office and retail properties in Europe at the end of 2017, 148 of which were part of the Regent Street and Mayfair Pollen Estate portfolios.

Yesterday, real estate services business Colliers International ranked London as Europe’s most attractive city for businesses and employees for second year running.

"London has proved its resilience and magnetism as a global hub in the wake of the EU referendum, with a diverse spectrum of investors and occupiers identifying the city as the best place in which to conduct their business," said Colliers' David Hanrahan.

[waldron] 27/2/2018 09:31

World's Biggest Wealth Fund Returned $131 Billion in 2017
By Sveinung Sleire
and Mikael Holter
27 février 2018 à 10:00 UTC+1

Norway’s wealth fund held 66.6% in stocks, 30.8% in bonds
Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund rallies with global markets

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund returned $131 billion in 2017, capping a year in which it passed the $1 trillion mark and shocked markets by proposing to drop oil and gas stocks.

The Oslo-based fund, which owns on average 1.4 percent of the world’s listed stocks, largely follows indexes but has leeway for some active management. It’s in the process of raising the share of stocks in its portfolio to 70 percent to improve returns. It’s also increasing its influence in areas such as executive pay, corporate corruption and sustainable investing.

Yngve Slyngstad
Photographer: Krister Soerboe/Bloomberg

“The fund’s cumulative return since inception has passed 4,000 billion kroner. One out of four kroner of return was generated in 2017, after a very strong year for the fund,” said Chief Executive Officer Yngve Slyngstad in a statement.

Norway’s $1 Trillion Fund Wants Out of Oil and Gas Stocks

The fund’s 13.7 percent return was generated in a year characterized by the biggest stock-market boom in eight years. The development pushed stocks to about 66.6 percent of its portfolio, edging closer to the 70 percent target.

The fund’s stock portfolio rose 19.4 percent in the year, while fixed income investments gained 3.3 percent and real estate grew 7.5 percent. It held 66.6 percent in stocks at the end of 2017, 30.8 percent in bonds and 2.6 percent in real estate.

The fund’s biggest equity investments in 2017 were Apple Inc., Nestle SA and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, while its largest fixed income holdings were U.S., Japanese and German government bonds.

The fund has also moved more into emerging markets over the past years to raise returns and the government is currently looking into whether it should buy private equity and infrastructure.

The government withdrew 61 billion kroner from the fund last year, after tumbling oil prices forced its first-ever withdrawals in 2016.

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[la forge] 16/2/2018 13:53

upstream going downstream and beyond

[sarkasm] 14/2/2018 16:13

Norway considers cull of all energy stocks – including renewables

14 February 2018By Rachel Fixsen

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As much as NOK300bn (€30.8bn) could be divested from energy stocks by Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund.

The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has tasked a group of experts with reviewing whether the NOK8.1trn (€830bn) Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) should drop all energy stocks from its portfolio – including companies involved in renewable energy.

It follows advice received in November from the fund’s manager, Norges Bank, to remove the oil and gas sector from the fund’s equity benchmark index.

The bank argued that offloading the stocks would make the government’s overall wealth less vulnerable to a permanent drop in oil and gas prices, taking account not only of the GPFG’s investments but also the government’s stake in oil firm Statoil.

Siv Jensen, Norway’s minister of finance, said: “The government seeks a broad basis for its decision. The issue must be thoroughly examined, as is the case for all important matters in the management of the GPFG.”

The ministry said it wanted the expert group to consider divestment from FTSE Russell’s energy sector indices, which are to be adjusted at the end of this year as part of a wider overhaul of the company’s benchmarks. The sector includes alternative fuels and renewable energy equipment stocks, and from 1 January 2019 will also include coal companies.

The GPFG currently invests roughly 4% of its portfolio in the sector, worth roughly NOK300bn.

The ministry has also launched a public consultation on the issue, and has written to Norges Bank asking for additional information about the proposed divestment of the stocks.

Øystein Thøgersen

Credit: NHH

Øystein Thøgersen

The group will be chaired by Øystein Thøgersen, professor and rector at NHH Norwegian School of Economics. Other members include Harald Magnus Andreassen, chief economist at Sparebank 1 Markets, and Olaug Svarva, the former chief executive of Folketrygdfondet, which manages the Nordic investment segment of the country’s sovereign wealth assets.

In its letter to Norges Bank, the ministry said it wanted more information on some aspects on the advice already received, including the basis for recommending a larger deviation between the fund’s benchmark index and the investment universe.

“In this way, the bank can continue to invest in companies in that sector, for example, within renewable energy, by deviating from the reference index within the given risk limits,” it wrote.

The government aimed to conclude the matter this autumn, the ministry said.

[maywillow] 16/1/2018 11:09

Norges Bank Investment Management, the arm of Norway's central bank that manages the country's $1.1 trillion oil fund, said Tuesday that it has excluded a further nine companies from the fund on ethical grounds.

Among those excluded is U.K. weapons maker BAE Systems PLC because of its involvement in the production of nuclear weapons. Data from the end of 2016, the latest available, shows that the oil fund held a 1.47% stake in BAE Systems.

AECOM, Fluor Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. have also been excluded for the same reason, while Honeywell International Inc.'s exclusion is maintained based on this criterion, it said.

The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has issued specific guidelines for the oil fund with criteria for observation and exclusion endorsed by Norway's parliament.

These criteria say the fund must not invest in companies which produce weapons that violate fundamental humanitarian principles through their normal use, produce tobacco, or sell weapons or military material to certain countries. Companies may also be excluded if there is an unacceptable risk of conduct that is considered grossly unethical.

Norges Bank decides on the exclusion of companies from the fund's investments, or to place them on an observation list.

Further exclusions announced Tuesday include Evergreen Marine Corp (Taiwan) Ltd, Korea Line Corp., Precious Shipping PCL and Thoresen Thai Agencies PCL due to the "risk of severe environmental damage and serious or systematic violations of human rights."

Pan Ocean Co. has been placed under observation based on the same criteria while Atal SA has also been excluded due to unacceptable risk of serious or systematic violations of human rights, Norges Bank said.

There are currently over 140 companies excluded from the fund and around 20 under observation.



-Write to Dominic Chopping at [e-mail]; Twitter: @domchopping @WSJNordics



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 16, 2018 05:37 ET (10:37 GMT)

[waldron] 21/12/2017 18:53

Aramco’s “Acquisition Hit List”
By Kent Moors - Dec 21, 2017, 12:00 PM CST Aramco

In about a year, Saudi Arabia is going to unleash the largest IPO in the world – ultimately transforming the entire energy investing landscape.

Make no mistake, the sale of a 5 percent position in oil giant Aramco will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

That’s why, as the market moves toward this historic placement, it is something we’re going to continue to follow closely.

Starting today.

With the countdown clock to the deadline starting to wind down, today I’m going to sketch out everything my sources are telling me about this colossal IPO.

And then I’ll show you how we’re going to play it.

But first, you need to understand what this IPO means…

Saudi Arabia’s “Next Move”

After the IPO, the Saudis will continue to control 95 percent of Aramco.

The overall value of both the placement and the company at large will be based on the market price of oil in the ground.

It also means the Saudis will have to provide transparent reserve figures, which has been a recurring concern since 1979.

In that year, Saudi Arabia took over control of Aramco from a consortium of American companies.

That is also the last time there were any official figures on how much extractable crude oil was in the fields.

This is the “next Saudi move” in the IPO.

We will be moving into high gear once Aramco announces an independent third-party specialist to assess oil reserves, conditions of major reservoirs, and extraction potential.

This is where the IPO has “meat put on its bones.”

Riyadh obviously wants as high a price for the IPO as possible.

However, that requires they release detailed reserve figures and projections.

In this sense, they are no different than any operating company floating shares.

The price an investor is prepared to pay is dependent on the market value of known extractable reserves, not on what is actually sold into the market on any given day.
Related: What’s Next For U.S. Shale Giants?

But here is the crucial piece of information you need to understand…

This IPO will introduce a very different investment strategy that will transform perspectives and expectations, as we have known them….

The Real Game Changer

As I’ve mentioned previously here at Oil & Energy Investor, the real game changer is what the IPO proceeds will be used for.

The Saudis intend to diversify their domestic economy and wean themselves from being a rentier state dependent on selling oil.

But that diversification will come from a unique approach.

Rather than based primarily on moving non-oil industry into Saudi Arabia, the diversification will unfold by acquiring non-oil assets someplace else.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The objective will be to diversify the revenue flow, with the sources of that revenue both external and in broad sectors of the market.

Consider this: the model for such an approach already exists.

The Norwegian is the best-known sovereign wealth fund (SWF) in the world and the oldest.

It utilizes revenues from the sale of oil and natural gas, is set up to finance the country’s ambitious social welfare program, and provides a fiscal buffer for the central budget in the event of a decline in oil and gas market prices.

But it is a further aspect of Norway’s fund that parallels Saudi Arabia’s intentions the most.

The Largest SWF the World Has Ever Seen

As of the fourth quarter of 2017, it has invested in 1.5 percent of all equity stocks publicly traded on all exchanges worldwide.

Each SWF, especially those based on natural resource sales (oil, natural gas, precious and other metals, etc.) have to be concerned with repatriating currency from sales.

In a phenomenon understood since David Hume in the late eighteenth century, returning hard currency (or gold and silver in Hume’s time) from foreign trade inflates the domestic currency and distorts the economy.

Hume called it the “price-specie flow mechanism.”

The capital influx increases the domestic money supply, thereby raising the prices of a country’s exports.

This price rise, in turn, cuts into any balance of payments surplus. Therefore, any attempt to have a permanent surplus is self-defeating in practice.

A more recent postscript to this is directly aimed at petrol-trading countries. Aimed at the aftermath following the discovery of substantial North Sea natural gas off of the Netherlands, it has become the modern version of Hume’s discovery.

Anything that ends up providing an appreciable increase in foreign hard currency into an economy will translate into…

• Currency appreciation;

• Reducing the competitiveness of other (in our case non-oil or gas) national commodities;

• Localized inflation (especially in those sectors of the economy having the least connection to the one providing the currency influx);

• And will mitigate against domestic diversification by encouraging the movement of non-resource dependent industry to less expensive locations.

In short, unless the new money is segregated from the domestic economy, it will have a major negative impact.

For this reason, SWFs, especially from oil-producing states, invest abroad and tightly control the repatriation of investment proceeds back home.

Once leverage is done, the Saudi investment fund created around the Aramco IPO will be the largest SWF the world has ever seen.

You owe it to yourself to make this year different…

As has been the case with other SWFs, it needs to invest abroad to avoid producing significant inflation domestically.

Of course, Aramco has had to wrestle with this concern for years.

The huge influx of funds arising from the Aramco IPO, however, will be like putting this problem on steroids.

That’s why I know that it is going to transform how we evaluate what an “energy” investment is.
Related: Wall Street Returns To U.S. Shale With A Bang

The base of this huge new SWF will be the value of Aramco’s oil.

That’s the energy part.

But the investments that happen as a result will be global and will be in virtually every sector of the traded markets.

A mammoth Saudi oil-based investment vehicle is going to be moving into everything from technology to recreation, consumer goods to real estate, and chemicals to industrial production.

With some traditional energy, renewables, efficiency, and field technology thrown in for good measure.

For you here at Oil & Energy Investor, I’m going to be leveraging my global network to find out early indications of where that Saudi money will be moving into, so we can target publicly-traded companies on the Saudi’s acquisition “hit list.”

This is unlike any other energy investment strategy…ever.

And I hope you are as excited as I am to jump right in.

By Dr. Kent Moors

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

[waldron] 14/12/2017 21:48

Total, Eni, Novatek win first Lebanon offshore licenses
By Dana Khraiche on 12/14/2017

BEIRUT (Bloomberg) -- Lebanon granted its first offshore energy rights to a group comprising Total SA, Eni SpA and Novatek PJSC, joining a regional race to find and develop oil and natural gas wealth in the eastern Mediterranean after years of delay.

The cabinet awarded two licenses in its first offshore bidding round, allowing the companies to jointly explore Blocks 4 and 9, Wissam Chbat, a member of the Lebanese Petroleum Administration, said Thursday by phone. The group has one month to prepare legal, administrative and technical paperwork before signing production-sharing contracts with the government in January, Chbat said. Drilling is expected to begin in 2019, he said.

France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek filed their bids to explore the two blocks in October -- the only proposals the government received. The licensing round has encountered setbacks since 2013 amid political disputes over block delineation and government paralysis, leaving Lebanon trailing Cyprus, Egypt and Israel in exploring the eastern Mediterranean. This year bidding was pushed back to give companies more time to understand a new tax law.

Israel dispute

Block 9 is one of three that lie in an area contested by Israel. Lebanon is working with the U.S. on resolving the dispute, according to Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Large gas reserves have been discovered in the eastern Mediterranean in recent years, including the giant Zohr deposit in Egyptian waters and the Leviathan and Tamar fields off the Israeli coast.

With a public debt amounting to around 150% of its GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund, and its economy weighed down by the cost of supporting 1.5 million refugees from Syria’s war, Lebanon is counting on revenue and taxes from discoveries to shore up its finances. That could help bolster fragile political breakthroughs this year in a nation once again caught in the middle of regional conflict.

It could, though, be some way off, said Carole Nakhle, director of London-based Crystol Energy.

“Experience shows that gas discoveries, particularly offshore, take time to be brought on stream. In Lebanon, this is more so because of lack of infrastructure,̶1; she said.

Seismic surveys show the country has at least 96 Tcf of gas and 850 MMbbl of oil, Gebran Bassil, who was then the country’s energy minister, said in 2013.

The government is also studying a bill on onshore energy rights as parliamentarians try to draft a law governing Lebanon’s first sovereign wealth fund, which would soak up revenue from oil and gas.

[waldron] 13/12/2017 07:46

Alliance News

PRESS: World Bank To End Funding For Oil & Gas Exploration By 2019
Wed, 13th Dec 2017 07:19


LONDON (Alliance News) - The World Bank is to end its financial support for oil & gas exploration within the next two years in response to the threat of climate change
, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

In a statement at the 'One Planet' climate conference in Paris on Tuesday, the World Bank said it "will no longer finance upstream oil and gas" after 2019.

The Guardian noted the development bank ceased lending for coal-fired power stations in 2010 but has been under pressure from lobby groups to half its USD1.00 billion a year spending on oil & gas lending in developing countries.

The World Bank said it will continue to lend "in exceptional circumstance" but only in the very poorest countries and if the project does not conflict with the 2015 Paris climate change accord.

The newspaper said the World Bank is on course to have 28% of its lending go towards climate action by 2020. At present, between 1% and 2% of its USD280.00 billion portfolio is for oil & gas projects, it said.



By George Collard; [e-mail]