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’Sovereign wealth watch
An oh-so-rare glimmer of sense and moderation amongst the SWF hysteria. Mohamed El-Erian, co-head of Pimco has said that fears about the funds’ investments in western companies is “overblown.”
He makes the point that the funds have been putting their money to work where we all most need it,
If you can’t beat the SWFs….
Stand by for more bashing of the sovereign wealth funds. Evil hedge funds are so 2006 and private equity has been credit crippled, but the largesse of the sovereign wealth funds in providing capital to the world’s largest investment banks has managed to establish them as a new focus for suspicion and unease.
The Real Deal: SWFs can always blame the Americans
When it comes to M&A, the Americans seem to have a misconception that the Arabs and Chinese are about to start acting like the Japanese during the 1980s.
Back then, Japanese companies descended into the US,
From the weak West to the strong East: a wealth transfer to beggar belief
In late 2007, there were two big themes which dominated the newsflow: the continuing impact of subprime on the world’s biggest banks and the rise in the east of Sovereign Wealth. The two trends, of course,
For Ernst & Young’s partners, it’s SWF bonanza time
A huge vote of confidence in the outlook for M&A activity in 2008 comes from Ernst & Young UK, which says it will admit more partners this year than in any previous years, many to work on international deals,
So what next for SWFs?
They’re the “new it girl” of finance apparently. Everyone wants a piece of them.
And with $3,000bn in assets under their control and projected to invest $5,000bn over the next five years, they are only going to become hotter property.
SWFs – they come in peace… probably
Sony, Citigroup, UBS, Apple Dubai… spot the odd one out.
Well done, Apple Dubai is in fact fictional. The others, however, all have something in common having received substantial capital injections from the dreaded SWFs. This gang are running around investing in companies throughout the developed world. UBS took $11.5bn from investors in Asia and the middle east,
Another day, another Chinese investment fund — and Britain can’t wait
Inspired, perhaps, by Beijing’s ambitious investment schemes, Shanghai’s city government is setting up a financial investment company with about $1bn, reports the FT.
The new agency, to be called Shanghai Financial Holdings,
Sovereign wealth fun, Chinese style
In a display of what we suspect is the growing sophistication of China’s sovereign wealth savvy, the country’s newly established sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp, is on a massive recruitment drive for investment talent.
IMF urges sovereign funds on disclosure
The IMF is to call on sovereign wealth funds to volunteer more comprehensive disclosure to ease concerns about their purchasing power in the financial system. Mohsin Khan, director of the IMF’s Middle East and central Asia department,
The beginnings of an 18 month equity bubble
John Dizard, writing in FTfm, predicts the start of an equity bull-run; a traditional end of cycle rally. The bubble hasn’t popped, it’s just beginning to inflate. Over the next 18 months, says Dizard,
And the winner of Miss SWF 2007 is…
New Zealand!
The Peterson Institute for International Economics have been tirelessly working to rank the world’s sovereign wealth giants. And much like in the real Miss World, big is not beautiful, concludes Peterson.
Stephen Jen: How to draw a SWF
Stephen Jen, global head of currency research at Morgan Stanley has been drawing sovereign wealth funds.
Rather than providing a more precise definition of SWFs, I
believe that it would be more accurate to describe what these
funds are in a diagram.
State capitalism: playing politics with sovereign wealth funds
It hasn’t taken long for sovereign wealth funds to enter the political fray. We heard voices earlier in the summer on the threat SWFs posed, but it’s taken a financial crisis to throw weight behind those fears.
Mid East SWF joins Virgin’s Rock bid
Virgin Group has lined up a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund that could come into its consortium bid for Northern Rock as early as this week. Virgin is understood to have received interest from a Middle Eastern investor as well as up to three from the US wishing to join the bid.
US plans SWF restrictions
The United States is to call for draconian rules to control sovereign wealth funds, the vast, opaque, state-backed financial powerhouses that hold assets worth about $2.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion), according to The Times.
The dollar era is over: a long, slow collapse and a central bank firesale
Sovereign Wealth funds won’t take over the world, but their meteoric growth will have one sure effect: the dollar era is over.
According to a Merrill Lynch note to clients, we’re in the begginings of a global readjustment that will end the dollar’s dominance as the “gold standard”
SWFs could change the world’s economy in the next 4 years
First there were rumours. Rumours became murmurs. And over the summer, we heard the first chatter on the rise of the sovereign wealth fund. Time to put some figures to paper.
In a report released on Friday,