When the quiet one in the room suddenly shouts, people tend to listen. On that basis, the reserved and thoughtful Norwegians who run the country’s $850bn oil fund should get a decent hearing next time they visit Wolfsburg, having declared they will sue Volkswagen over the emissions scandal.

Class-action suits by investors are an oddly circular way to extract money from the pot they themselves own and should not generally be encouraged. The Norwegian action needs to be seen, though, in the light of VW’s peculiarly dysfunctional corporate governance and the wider strategy of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

VW presents a special case for shareholders to try more aggressive tactics because it has a weak supervisory board — the body that is supposed to hold management to account — and a habit of ignoring minority investors. It is hard to shift the Porsche and Pi?ch families and the state of Lower Saxony, which control the company with an arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. The oil fund has tried conventional means. It meets regularly with VW and broke its usual silence in a public letter to the company in 2009, criticising deals that secured the main shareholders’ control. Its backing for a rare lawsuit shows its continued frustration.