By Khac Phu Nguyen
Publication Date: 2025-12-01 12:26:00
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Norway’s $2.1 trillion sovereign wealth fund just introduced a new tension point around Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), taking a stance that could be read as both stabilizing and quietly disruptive. Norges Bank Investment Management, which held about $50 billion of Microsoft shares at the end of June, voted against a proposal pushing the company to reassess its human-rights due diligence after reports that Israeli military units used Microsoft products for mass surveillance in Gaza and the West Bank. NBIM suggested it tends not to back proposals when a company does not appear to have major gaps in managing sustainability risks, pointing to Microsoft’s own steps earlier this year, when the company disabled certain software used by the Israeli military after an internal investigation flagged data-storage violations on its cloud services.
Yet the fund did not simply rubber-stamp management’s positions. NBIM broke ranks on one shareholder…