The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has decided to divest from French conglomerate Bolloré, the target of long-running allegations of human rights violations, sexual violence and labor rights abuses at plantations in Africa and Southeast Asia. The decision followed a recommendation issued in 2024 by the ethics council of Norway’s $2.2 trillion Government Pension Fund Global, which advised divesting from Bolloré-affiliated companies based on documentation of poor working conditions, gender-based violence and harassment at oil palm plantations in Cameroon. The allegations were against the Socfin Group, a Luxembourg-based holding company in which Bolloré has significant shares. The pension fund had engaged with Bolloré for two years before divesting. In its recently published 2025 responsible investment report, Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the fund, said that “after [attempts] at engagement, the Executive Board decided in 2025 to exclude the companies based on the recommendation of the Council on Ethics from 2024.” The Government Pension Fund Global held a 0.4% stake in Bolloré, worth about $70 million, as of June 30, 2025. Bloomberg reports that, by the end of 2025, it no longer owned any shares. “The world’s biggest pension fund is basically saying that whatever Socfin is doing on their plantations, whatever the governments try doing with their due diligence laws — it is not good enough,” Silva Lieberherr from HEKS, a Swiss NGO that works on land rights, climate justice and humanitarian disasters, told Mongabay, adding that such action highlights “how problematic the plantation economy is. Bolloré has come…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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