Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, plans to make more efforts to identify and divest stakes in unviable companies following recent turmoil in the global banking system, Reuters reported.

“We think it’s increasingly important to invest resources in finding what I call bad apples,” the fund’s CEO Nikolaj Tangen told a parliamentary hearing in Oslo on Tuesday.

“These are companies whose health may not be what it seems,” he explained.

The fund, which he runs under the auspices of Norway’s central bank, says it lost a “significant amount” after the March 10 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, one of more than 9,200 companies in its portfolio, earlier this year.

The fund also held a stake in Credit Suisse, the Swiss banking giant that was bailed out by rival UBS in coordination with the Swiss government after the US banking panic spread across the Atlantic.

The world’s largest investment fund dumped Adani Group shares

As of early 2023, the Oslo-based sovereign wealth fund held a 1.01% stake in Silicon Valley Bank owner SVB Financial Group, a stake valued at $138 million. In the case of Credit Suisse Group, the Norwegian fund owned shares worth $177.7 million.

On Tuesday, Tangen told the finance committee of the Norwegian parliament that the fund he runs can save money by identifying troubled companies in time.

“We can never identify all the bad apples, but we can try to identify as many as possible,” he added.

As an example, he said the fund sold most of its holdings in Adani Group before the news broke in January, sending the share price of the conglomerate owned by Indian businessman Gautam Adani plummeting.

Since the beginning of this year, shares of Adani Enterprises have fallen by 51%.