Norway’s Largest Pension Fund Divests from Companies Selling Equipment to Israel over Gaza Genocide

Norway’s largest pension fund, KLP, has announced it will no longer do business with two companies that sell equipment to the Israeli military because the equipment is possibly being used in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

“In June 2024, KLP learned of reports from the UN that several named companies were supplying weapons or equipment to the [Israeli army] and that these weapons are being used in Gaza,” Kiran Aziz, the head of responsible investments at KLP Kapitalforvaltning, said in a statement.

“Our conclusion is that the companies Oshkosh and ThyssenKrupp are contravening our responsible investment guidelines,” the statement said.

“We have therefore decided to exclude them from our investment universe.”

The two companies are the Oshkosh Corporation, a United States company mostly focused on trucks and military vehicles, and ThyssenKrupp, a German industrial firm that makes a broad selection of products, ranging from elevators and industrial machinery to warships.

According to the pension fund, it had investments worth $1.8m in Oshkosh and almost $1m in ThyssenKrupp until June 2025.

KLP said that it had been in touch with both companies before it made its decision and that Oshkosh “confirmed that it has sold, and continues to sell, equipment that is used by the [Israeli army] in Gaza”, mostly vehicles and parts for vehicles.

ThyssenKrupp told KLP that “it has a long-term relationship with [the Israeli army]” and that it had delivered four warships of the type Sa’ar 6 to the Israeli Navy in the period November 2020 to May 2021. It also said it had plans to deliver a submarine to the Israeli Navy later this year.

When asked by KLP what checks and balances were made when it came to the use of the equipment the companies delivered, KLP said both Oshkosh and ThyssenKrupp “failed to document the necessary due diligence in relation to their potential complicity in violations of humanitarian law”.

“Companies have an independent duty to exercise due diligence in order to avoid complicity in violations of fundamental human rights and humanitarian law,” said Aziz.

This is not the first time that the pension fund has divested from companies linked to possible human rights abuses.

In 2021, KLP divested from 16 companies, including telecom giant Motorola, that it concluded were linked to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The pension fund said there was an “unacceptable risk that the excluded companies are contributing to the abuse of human rights in situations of war and conflict through their links with the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank”.

Last summer, KLP also divested from US firm Caterpillar with its bulldozers undergoing adjustments in Israel by the military and local companies, and are subsequently used in the occupied Palestinian territory.

This latest decision follows a growing trend among major European investment funds, many of which have severed ties with Israeli companies due to their involvement in the Gaza genocide or connections to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.