Danish pension fund drops Israeli investments over human rights concerns

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Danish fund manager AkademikerPension is excluding Israeli state assets, including government-controlled companies, from its investment portfolio, it said on Wednesday, due to the war in Gaza and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It is the latest decision by a European fund manager to curtail investments in Israel, following recent divestments by Norway's $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund.

The 157 billion Danish crowns ($24.77 billion) AkademikerPension, which manages the pensions of Danish teachers and university lecturers, said the conflict was not in accordance with international humanitarian principles.

"This comes as an assessment of the state of Israel's ability to uphold human rights," CEO Jens Munch Holst told Reuters.

Israel has drawn widespread condemnation over its military conduct in Gaza, where more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed, according to local health authorities, and famine has spread.

The war began when Hamas stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The United Nations' highest court last year said Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and settlements there were illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible, in a ruling that Tel Aviv rejected as "fundamentally wrong" and one-sided.

($1 = 6.3393 Danish crowns)

(Reporting by Soren Jeppesen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Ed Osmond)