The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition Trond Grande wants to dispel a widely held notion that Norway's influential public investment vehicle is an activist fund. The Globe's Brian Milner writes the trillion-dollar Government Pension Fund Global certainly pushes for more transparency, greater accountability and other such classic investor-friendly reforms as the elimination of dual-class shares and more female directors. It also shuns individual companies and entire sectors -- including tobacco peddlers, palm oil producers, nuclear weapons makers and the likes of Wal-Mart, Barrick Gold and Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan -- for environmental, ethical or human rights concerns. By next year, following a directive from parliament, the fund will also be required to pull out of any companies that derive at least 30 per cent of their business from coal. By one estimate, it will have to divest more than $8-billion worth of assets as a result. Short-term thinking does not enter the picture. "We say that we're active, but not activists. With that, we mean that we're not passive," says Mr. Grande, the affable deputy chief executive officer of fund manager Norges Bank Investment.