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’$8,000bn speaks reserve currencies
The dollar is down, the euro is out, and SDRs are in. Results from UBS’s reserve management survey, canvassing institutions with a collective $8,000bn of assets:
What horrors lie inside the Gaddafi fund
You’ve read the FT story – now see the document unearthed by Global Witness:
We’ll go through it later but needless to say, it confirms FT Alphaville’s worst fears about how badly the LIA mismanaged the Libyan people’s oil wealth…
Further further reading
For the commute home, where the carry trade means helping your better half unload the car in exchange for first dibs on the remote,
- The FT visits Bernie Madoff.
- Where Galleon allegedly made its money.
Further further reading
For the commute home, where your wealth funds are always sovereign,
- A quick who’s who in Yemen.
- Bernanke to start doing quarterly press conferences.
- Surprise! SWFs help prop up autocrats.
Further further reading
For the commute home, or while wondering if expedia also does tax holidays,
- Do not gloss over munis’ frailties.
- Gulf SWFs (unsurprisingly) are revisiting their investment strategies.
- A tax holiday for MNCs is a very bad idea.
Bahrain: Saudis in, violence up and capital out
Further crackdowns took place in Bahrain on Wednesday with the army calling a curfew in parts of Manama and banning gatherings until the situation was “back to normal”, reports the FT on Wednesday.
Sovereign wealth, a Gulf ‘supply chain’ risk
As the jackboot comes down hard in Bahrain on Wednesday, it’s worth asking what happened to the ‘modern’ ambitions of the Gulf monarchies who are providing military, financial and political support to the ruling Khalifa family.
GCC launches a Sovereign Health Fund for Bahrain and Oman
You’re familiar with SWFs — and the damage they can cause in the wrong hands — but on Thursday Bloomberg carried news of what we’ll call a Sovereign Health Fund (SHF):
The Gulf Cooperation Council plans to set up a fund worth more than $10 billion,
The great Gaddafi cash call
By this point, the assets of the Libyan Investment Authority are frozen in just about every major financial jurisdiction. Except, of course, Libya.
So, a quick question. Is a sovereign wealth fund financing a war?
Because here’s a revelation from the NYT:
Further further reading
For the commute home, and to help you qualify the recovery,
- David Wessel spots three storm clouds in the US recovery: oil, rich-country government policy, and emerging market slowdown.
- David Leonhardt spots a few more.
Plunge protection teams, New Egypt edition
On a less than glorious day for MENA sovereign wealth funds…
FT Alphaville’s Cairo agent sends this newspaper clipping our way:
It’s a report on the Egyptian stock exchange’s continued inability to reopen,
Freezing Gaddafi’s billions
Or, just who is ‘sovereign’ in a sovereign wealth fund, anyway?
Western powers were starting to catch up with the Libyan people in hitting Colonel Gaddafi where it hurts on Friday. In this instance,
Illinois pension bond sale – not a disaster
From the WSJ on Wednesday afternoon, provisional details of Illinois’ delayed $3.7bn pension bond sale:
Initial indications on the deal Tuesday showed $6.1 billion in orders, with around a fifth of those coming from international investors,
SWFs, plotted
Courtesy of the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institue:
We’ve got the same question as the Oxford SWF Project: If the funds on the left are low in transparency, how do we know their strategy?
If not the ECB, whom?
We don’t quite understand why the bond market seems so weirdly blasé over what the ECB has (not) revealed on its sovereign debt strategy.
On the one hand, we give the ECB points for the market signal it sent via buying Irish and Portuguese bonds even as President Trichet was saying that the Securities Markets Programme would be ‘ongoing’.
On SWFs and private money
A couple of items to note for the Sovereign Wealth Fund trend-watchers out there.
First, a milestone of sorts. The Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute just reported that SWF assets have crossed the $4,000bn mark,
The self-denying sovereign wealth fund
This is – in a way - yet another of those posts commemorating the fall of Lehman Brothers, two years ago to the day.
Then again — the post-Lehman sovereign wealth fund really has become something to behold,
Adventures in equity knife-catching, SWF edition (updated)
If you’re a BP investor who thought twice about catching the falling knife of the firm’s post-Gulf spill shares this summer — well, spare a thought for Norway.
Thanks to the government’s sovereign wealth fund,
CIC — the multi-purpose SWF
Oh, for an investment bank client like China Investment Corp, as Lex observed recently, noting: “While other sovereign wealth funds talk a good deal, CIC does them”.
Many governments may also wish they had an SWF like CIC.
Funds FAIL!
From the annual fund management report by International Financial Services London (IFSL):
Global fund management Conventional assets under management of the global fund management industry fell 19% in 2008,
Sovereign wealth funds prefer equities
Sovereign wealth funds are overwhelmingly exposed to equities and fixed income, according to the latest data from Preqin, a research firm which focuses on alternative asset classes.
SWFs’ appetite for Western assets – notably financial institutions,
While buy-out groups struggle, SWFs retreat
Much has been written and spoken lately about the travails of the private equity industry – not least by the buy-out kingpins themselves, led by KKR co-founder Henry Kravis who, as the FT notes Wednesday,
You can’t even depend on the SWFs
Morgan Stanley’s global head of currency research Stephen Jen is scaling back his view on the might of the sovereign wealth funds.
The team’s original prediction for assets under management by 2015 was $12 trillion.