Norway's state pension fund, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, has dropped Shanghai Industrial Holdings from its portfolio because it produces tobacco, Norway said Tuesday.
The finance ministry added US firm L-3 communications would be reinstated in the fund's portfolio because it had stopped producing cluster bombs components.
Norway's oil fund, which contains nearly all state revenues from the country's massive oil and gas industry, was worth 355.9 billion euros (496.5 billion dollars) at the end of the third quarter.
Shanghai Industrial Holdings was excluded because it entirely controls Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company, which produces tobacco, the Norwegian finance ministry said.
At the start of 2010, the fund — which is managed according to strict ethical rules — said it sold its shares in 17 international tobacco companies following a ban proposed the previous year.
It has also begun looking into even companies that count tobacco production as only a minority activity.
"Such companies would still have to be excluded even when tobacco production represented only a small proportion of their total activities," the ministry said.
Norway did not say how much the shares sold were worth, but according to the last figures available, the fund controlled 0.32 percent of Shanghai Industrial Holdings at the end of 2009, worth some 102.6 million kroner (12.9 million euros, 18.1 million dollars).
In addition to tobacco companies, strict ethical guidelines from the government bar the fund from investing in "particularly inhumane" weapons manufacturers and in companies known to be involved in large-scale human rights violations, corruption, or environmental pollution.
Around 50 companies have already been blacklisted by the fund, including Boeing, Wal-Mart, EADS and BAE Systems.
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