Press Release - Annual Meeting of the Trustees of the Nobel Foundation

The 2005 Financial Management of the Nobel Foundation

At their meeting on Friday, April 28, the Trustees of the Nobel Foundation approved the 2005 financial statements of the Foundation:

• On December 31, 2005, the market value of the Foundation's invested capital amounted to SEK 3,570 m. Total return on assets (growth in Foundation assets after adding back the year's disbursements) amounted to 24.5 percent.
  
  
• Net assets, that is, the market value of equity calculated as invested capital at market value adjusted for other balance sheet items, rose by 20.7 percent or SEK 607.6 m.
  
  
• The value of the Foundation's stock portfolio, which comprised 68 percent of the total portfolio at year-end, rose by 35.2 percent during 2005. The annual average for the last five years' return on assets is 0.9 percent, compared to -0.4 percent for a benchmark index. During the same period, the MSCI World Index showed an average annual change of -1.2 percent.
  
  
• The return on the Foundation's bond portfolio during 2005 was 4.3 percent, compared to 4.2 percent for a benchmark index. The market value of this portfolio comprised 25 percent of the total portfolio at year-end.
  
  
• The Foundation's book profit amounted to SEK 217.0 m.
  
  
• The 2006 Nobel Prizes were set at SEK 10.0 m per Prize (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace). The total amount of all five Nobel Prizes is SEK 50.0 m. In addition, the Bank of Sweden (Sveriges Riksbank) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will amount to SEK 10.0 m.
  
  

Changes in the Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation and in the Trustees of the Nobel Foundation

As a new alternate of the Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation, the Trustees elected Professor Astrid Gräslund, Secretary of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, who becomes the first woman member of the Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation.

As their new Chairman, the Trustees of the Nobel Foundation elected Kaci Kullmann Five, a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Stockholm, April 28, 2006

THE NOBEL FOUNDATION / Michael Sohlman, Executive Director