KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 18): Shares in Genting Bhd fell as much as 14 sen, or 2%, to RM7 this morning following news that the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s top sovereign wealth fund with assets of US$871 billion, has dropped Genting from its investments.

According to a statement from the Norwegian fund yesterday, Genting, construction firm IJM Corp Bhd as well as South Korean companies Posco and its subsidiary Daewoo International Corp were removed from the fund as these companies were deemed bearing the risk of severe environmental damage.

According to a Reuters report, at the start of 2015, the Norwegian fund owned shares worth 1.49 billion Norwegian crowns (RM744.49 million) in Posco, 67.5 million crowns (RM33.73 million) in Daewoo International, 305.6 million crowns (RM152.7 million) in Genting and 344.8 million crowns (RM172.29 million) in IJM.

“It only updates its holding once per year,” said Reuters.

The report added that the exclusions followed a recommendation by the fund's Council of Ethics, which said the firms or their subsidiaries were involved in the destruction of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia.

“The fund has a range of ethics criteria for excluding firms from its portfolio, including severe environmental damage, nuclear weapons making, tobacco production and labour conditions,” said Reuters.

At 10.23am, Genting (fundamental: 2.1; valuation: 1.4) had recovered 1.43% from its morning losses, but was still down 0.6% from its close yesterday at RM7.10 with 959,900 shares traded.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)