svein gjedrem : wealth management in a public setting introductory statement by mr svein gjedrem, governor of norges bank ( central bank of norway ), to panel discussion on “ problems of plenty? challenges and opportunities from the accumulation of large exchange reserves and windfall revenue ”, arranged as part of the seminar program of the 2006 annual meetings of the imf and the world bank, singapore, 18 september 2006. please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. * * * 1. thank you for this opportunity to discuss the challenges that arise when managing financial wealth in a public sector environment. norges bank now has eight to ten years of experience of this task, and i shall try to describe in brief the strategies adopted by norges bank, and what we believe we have learned. 2. we have a large amount of money under management. our foreign reserves are probably larger than needed for financial stability and monetary policy operations. but the most important fund is the government pension fund, formerly the petroleum fund. we have been responsible for managing that fund since its inception in 1996, and it has been a major task for us since 1998. 3. the value of the petroleum resources in the north sea is currently estimated at about usd 700 billion. the government receives the bulk of the revenues generated from petroleum extraction as sales revenues and taxes. the government channels these revenues into the pension fund as financial assets. annual spending from the fund is subject to a spending rule, whereby the government commits to limit spending. over time spending should not exceed the estimated expected real return on the fund ’ s investments, set at 4 per cent per year. this implies that the fund is expected to become a permanent savings account. 4. at the outset, there was already an investment management operation in the bank, for the foreign reserves. but when it became clear in 1997 that the pension fund would be growing fast, we decided to set up a separate management unit, now called norges bank investment management ( nbim ). our challenge was to build a business organisation within a traditional civil service culture. the new unit recruited investment professionals from outside the bank as well as people from the existing reserve management operations. nbim was explicitly defined as a business unit, which should be different from the rest of the central bank in many respects. to avoid any suspicion that nbim would benefit from proprietary central bank information, the new unit was placed completely outside the decision - making processes

currency ( cbdc ) : in addition to taking an active part in the work on a potential euro retail cbdc, as early as 2020 we launched a series of twelve experiments on a wholesale cbdc, both for payments and securities settlement. the first nine experiments have been very valuable, and the three experiments underway focus on cross - border payments and tokenised asset settlement. 4 we are keen to pursue our long - standing partnership with commercial banks, to reconcile innovation and security. to conclude, this stay in new york is also the opportunity for me to point out that the statue of liberty, which so forcefully embodies our common values, is the fruit of a tight cooperation between france and america. let this fruitful cooperation carry on throughout the 21st century ; we will be happy to welcome you in paris. i thank you for your attention, and will now leave the floor to olivier vigna, deputy ceo of paris europlace. 1 ecb, macroeconomic projections, 16 march 2023 2 eurostat flash estimate, 31 march 2023 3 bloomberg, 22 march 2023 4 an updated report will be published by the banque de france within next months. you can already refer to our report published in november 2021 for the key findings from our first nine experiments. 3 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches