Sovereign wealth fund

The term "sovereign wealth fund" was first used in 2005 by Andrew Rozanov in an article entitled, "Who holds the wealth of nations?" in the Central Banking Journal.[1] The previous edition of the journal described the shift from traditional reserve management to sovereign wealth management; subsequently the term gained widespread use as the spending power of global officialdom has rocketed upward.

Some of them have grabbed attention making bad investments in several Wall Street financial firms such as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch. These firms needed a cash infusion due to losses resulting from mismanagement and the subprime mortgage crisis.

SWFs invest in a variety of asset classes such as stocks, bonds, real estate, private equity and hedge funds. Many sovereign funds are directly investing in institutional real estate. According to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute's transaction database around US$9.26 billion in direct sovereign wealth fund transactions were recorded in institutional real estate for the last half of 2012.[2] In the first half of 2014, global sovereign wealth fund direct deals amounted to $50.02 billion according to the SWFI.[3]

$1 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund initial investment
15% compounding interest annually

Dividend payments of 1.5% on initial $1B investment
$26.7 billion in total dividend payments over 40 years.
Dividends were not reinvested and can be used as revenue for the government.

SWFs are typically created when governments have budgetary surpluses and have little or no international debt. It is not always possible or desirable to hold this excess liquidity as money or to channel it into immediate consumption. This is especially the case when a nation depends on raw material exports like oil, copper or diamonds. In such countries, the main reason for creating a SWF is because of the properties of resource revenue: high volatility of resource prices, unpredictability of extraction, and exhaustibility of resources.

There are two types of funds: saving funds and stabilization funds. Stabilization SWFs are created to reduce the volatility of government revenues, to counter the boom-bust cycles' adverse effect on government spending and the national economy. Savings SWFs build up savings for future generations. One such fund is the Government Pension Fund of Norway. It is believed that SWFs in resource-rich countries can help avoid resource curse, but the literature on this question is controversial. Governments may be able to spend the money immediately, but risk causing the economy to overheat, e.g., in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela or Shah-era Iran. In such circumstances, saving the money to spend during a period of low inflation is often desirable.

Other reasons for creating SWFs may be economic, or strategic, such as war chests for uncertain times. For example, the Kuwait Investment Authority during the Gulf War managed excess reserves above the level needed for currency reserves (although many central banks do that now). The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and Temasek Holdings are partially the expression of a desire to bolster Singapore's standing as an international financial centre. The Korea Investment Corporation has since been similarly managed. Sovereign wealth funds invest in all types of companies and assets, including startups like Xiaomi and renewable energy companies like Bloom Energy.[6]

According to a 2014 study, SWFs are not created for reasons related to reserve accumulation and commodity-export specialization. Rather, the diffusion of SWF can best understood as a fad whereby certain governments consider it fashionable to create SWFs and are influenced by what their peers are doing.[7]

The growth of sovereign wealth funds is attracting close attention because:

• As this asset pool continues to expand in size and importance, so does its potential impact on various asset markets.
• Some countries, like the United States, which passed the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007, worry that foreign investment by SWFs raises national security concerns because the purpose of the investment might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.
• Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers has argued that the U.S. could potentially lose control of assets to wealthier foreign funds whose emergence "shake[s] [the] capitalist logic".[4] These concerns have led the European Union (EU) to reconsider whether to allow its members to use "golden shares" to block certain foreign acquisitions.[8] This strategy has largely been excluded as a viable option by the EU, for fear it would give rise to a resurgence in international protectionism. In the United States, these concerns are addressed by the Exon–Florio Amendment to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-418, § 5021, 102 Stat. 1107, 1426 (codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. app. § 2170 (2000)), as administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
• Their inadequate transparency is a concern for investors and regulators: for example, size and source of funds, investment goals, internal checks and balances, disclosure of relationships, and holdings in private equity funds.
• SWFs are not nearly as homogeneous as central banks or public pension funds.
• A lack of transparency and hence an increase in risk to the financial system, perhaps becoming the "new hedge funds".[9]

The governments of SWF's commit to follow certain rules:

• Accumulation rule (what portion of revenue can be spent/saved)
• Withdraw rule (when the Government can withdraw from the fund)
• Investment (where revenue can be invested in foreign or domestic assets)[10]

Assets under management of SWFs amounted to $7.94 trillion as of 24 December 2020.[18]

Countries with SWFs funded by oil and gas exports, totaled $5.4 trillion as of 2020.[19] Non-commodity SWFs are typically funded by transfer of assets from official foreign exchange reserves, and in some cases from government budget surpluses and privatization revenues. Middle Eastern and Asian countries account for 77% of all SWFs.

Numerous SWFs have gone bust throughout history. The most noticeable ones have been Algeria's FRR, Brazil's FSB, Ecuador's numerous SWF arrangements, Papua New Guinea's MRSF, and Venezuela's FIEM and FONDEN. The main reason why these funds have been exhausted is due to political instability, while economic determinants generally play an important but inconsequential role.[20] SWFs in unstable countries may provoke risks for recipient states of SWF investments, given that the instability in SWF-sponsor countries makes those investments uncertain and likely to be disinvested to weather political risk in the short-term.

Highly stable countries, such as Denmark, Qatar, China, or Australia are less likely to experience SWF depletion precisely because of their political stability.

• Boutique investment bank
• Fund of funds
• Global financial system
• Government Pension Fund of Norway
• Investment management
• List of exchange-traded funds
• List of hedge funds
• List of investment banks
• List of private-equity firms
• National wealth

• Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute – What is a SWF? What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund? - SWFI
• Natural Resource Governance Institute & Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment "Managing the Public Trust: How to make natural resource funds work for citizens", 2014.
• Castelli Massimiliano and Fabio Scacciavillani "The New Economics of Sovereign Wealth Funds", John Wiley & Sons, 2012
• Saleem H. Ali and Gary Flomenhoft. "Innovating Sovereign Wealth Funds" Archived 3 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Policy Innovations, 17 February 2011.
• M. Nicolas J. Firzli and Vincent Bazi, World Pensions Council (WPC) Asset Owners Report: “Infrastructure Investments in an Age of Austerity: The Pension and Sovereign Funds Perspective”, USAK/JTW 30 July 2011 and Revue Analyse Financière, Q4 2011
• M. Nicolas J. Firzli and Joshua Franzel. "Non-Federal Sovereign Wealth Funds in the United States and Canada". Revue Analyse Financière, Q3 2014
• Xu Yi-chong and Gawdat Bahgat, eds. The Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 272 pages; case studies of SWFs in China, Kuwait, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries.
• Lixia, Loh. "Sovereign Wealth Funds: States Buying the World" (Global Professional Publishing: 2010).

• SWF Institute Organization dedicated to Studying Sovereign Wealth Funds
• International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds IFSWF is a voluntary group of SWFs – Set up by IMF
• Balin, Bryan J. (2010). "The impact of the global economic crisis on sovereign wealth funds". Asian-Pacific Economic Literature. 24: 1–8. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8411.2010.01246.x. S2CID 152517943.
• Sovereign Wealth Fund Rank SWF Rankings
• The impact of sovereign wealth funds on global financial markets – European Central Bank, Occasional Paper No 91. July 2008.
• Linaburg-Maduell Transparency Index – Point system on grading sovereign wealth fund transparency
• One Planet Sovereign Wealth Funds One Planet SWF Page