Norway's sovereign wealth fund returned 7.6 percent, or 544 billion Norwegian kroner (67 billion U.S. dollars), in 2014, with positive results for all its asset classes, but underperformed its benchmarks, the fund said on Friday.

Equity investments returned 7.9 percent, fixed-income investments 6.9 percent, and real estate investments 10.4 percent for the fund, formally known as the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) and ranked as the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund, it said in a statement.

"2014 was a good year for the GPFG, with positive results for all its asset classes," said Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Management, which is the part of the Norwegian central bank that is responsible for managing the fund.

"Strong stock markets in the first half of the year and falling yields made a positive contribution to the results," he added.

The overall return on the fund's equity and fixed-income investments was 0.8 percentage point lower than the return on the benchmark indices. This can be explained mainly by a higher weight of European stocks and the shorter duration of fixed-income investments compared with the benchmark.

The share invested in real estate climbed to 2.2 percent, and a separate leader group for real estate was established to build a separate organisation for these investments, the fund said.

The Norwegian krone weakened against many of the main currencies during the year, which increased the fund's value by 702 billion kroner, and new capital of 147 billion kroner was transferred from the government.

The market value of the fund was 6,431 billion kroner at the end of 2014, of which 61.3 percent was invested in equities, 36.5 percent in fixed income and 2.2 percent in real estate, the fund said. Endit

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