I have written before for the blog about the emerging “sovereign wealth funds” (see: 1 2 3 4 5 6). This story from the Telegraph (UK) by Amrbose Evans-Pritchard (who, by the way, has done a great job covering the sub-prime meltdown) provides some statistics that I have not seen before:
- The size of the largest funds: “Abu Dhabi’s ADIA ($875bn), Singapore’s GIC ($330bn), Norway’s Petroleum Fund $300bn), Russia’s Stablisation Fund ($100bn, but growing fast)”
- The aggregate size of sovereign wealth funds: $2.20Bn, estimated by Morgan Stanley to grow to $12Tn by 2015.
- The share that these funds represent of total global assets: 2.5%, estimated also by Morgan to grow to 9% by 2015.
- Sovereign wealth funds are “already bigger than hedge funds”.
The bulk of the story deals with German’s ban on the purchase of certain German companies by these funds. The writer incorrectly identifies this as a breakdown of the EU’s “fragile free-market consensus” under the “strain of globalisation”. These funds result either from government ownership of resources of currency pegging.
