Norway's huge oil fund is holding fire on possible investments in the eurozone's beefed-up rescue mechanism until it has more information on how they would be structured, its chief executive said.
"We do not have sufficient detail really to comment on what it would do for us in terms of investment opportunity," Yngve Slyngstad told Reuters in an interview, adding the oil fund's existing exposure to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) was small.
Eurozone leaders stepped up efforts on Thursday to tackle the region's debt crisis, agreeing to leverage the EFSF to give it enhanced firepower of 1.0 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) and proposing a special investment vehicle to bolster it with outside funds.
"It's a direction which we think is positive, but it is still (lacking the) details that make it possible for us to comment on whether we want to participate," Slyngstad said.
The Norwegian fund, Europe's largest equity investor and managed by its central bank, has about 75 billion euros ($106 billion) invested in euro-denominated bonds and Slyngstad said it had a large interest in seeing the euro project succeed.
The fund's overall investments amount to about $572 billion, after it battled through the second-worst quarter in its history in the three months to September as Europe's debt crisis and a fear of a world-wide recession hit share prices.
The fund is shifting its long-term focus away from European equities and fixed income and instead aims to direct its cash inflow, stemming from Norway's oil and gas assets, towards Asian growth markets and real estate.
"Of course we are committed to Europe although we have signalled that over time the fund will have less of its investment in Europe," the CEO said.
"In the third quarter we actually used a majority, or nearly all of the capital inflow to buy into European equities. So we are still investing in Europe and increasing our exposure there."
Slyngstad earlier told a news conference the fund only had a limited exposure to the EFSF. It had less than 100 million euros in EFSF investments at the end of the third quarter compared with the 13 billion euros the rescue mechanism issued in three sales of bonds on behalf of the eurozone states it is bailing out.
Slyngstad told Reuters that while the fund's equity investments had not targeted specific European sectors in the quarter, it had decreased its exposure to the financial sector.
"It is quite likely that the European financial institutions and banks within the euro zone will raise more capital, and we will look at that situation when we see anything more concrete," he said. "It hasn't been anything that has been flagged to us, so we are still in a wait-and-see mode."
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