Sovereign wealth fund

A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), sovereign investment fund, or social wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity fund or hedge funds. Sovereign wealth funds invest globally. Most SWFs are funded by revenues from commodity exports or from foreign-exchange reserves held by the central bank. By historic convention, the United States' Social Security Trust Fund, with US$2.8 trillion of assets in 2014, and similar vehicles like Japan Post Bank's JP¥200 trillion of holdings, are not considered sovereign wealth funds. A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), sovereign investment fund, or social wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity fund or hedge funds. Sovereign wealth funds invest globally. Most SWFs are funded by revenues from commodity exports or from foreign-exchange reserves held by the central bank. By historic convention, the United States' Social Security Trust Fund, with US$2.8 trillion of assets in 2014, and similar vehicles like Japan Post Bank's JP¥200 trillion of holdings, are not considered sovereign wealth funds. Some sovereign wealth funds may be held by a central bank, which accumulates the funds in the course of its management of a nation's banking system; this type of fund is usually of major economic and fiscal importance. Other sovereign wealth funds are simply the state savings that are invested by various entities for the purposes of investment return, and that may not have a significant role in fiscal management. The accumulated funds may have their origin in, or may represent, foreign currency deposits, gold, special drawing rights (SDRs) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) reserve positions held by central banks and monetary authorities, along with other national assets such as pension investments, oil funds, or other industrial and financial holdings. These are assets of the sovereign nations that are typically held in domestic and different reserve currencies (such as the dollar, euro, pound, and yen). Such investment management entities may be set up as official investment companies, state pension funds, or sovereign funds, among others. There have been attempts to distinguish funds held by sovereign entities from foreign-exchange reserves held by central banks. Sovereign wealth funds can be characterized as maximizing long-term return, with foreign exchange reserves serving short-term 'currency stabilization', and liquidity management. Many central banks in recent years possess reserves massively in excess of needs for liquidity or foreign exchange management. Moreover, it is widely believed most have diversified hugely into assets other than short-term, highly liquid monetary ones, though almost no data is publicly available to back up this assertion. Some central banks have even begun buying equities, or derivatives of differing ilk (even if fairly safe ones, like overnight interest rate swaps). 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. 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. In the first half of 2014, global sovereign wealth fund direct deals amounted to $50.02 billion according to the SWFI. Sovereign wealth funds have existed for more than a century, but since 2000, the number of sovereign wealth funds has increased dramatically. The first SWFs were non-federal U.S. state funds established in the mid-19th century to fund specific public services. The U.S. state of Texas was thus the first to establish such a scheme, to fund public education. The Permanent School Fund (PSF) was created in 1854 to benefit primary and secondary schools, with the Permanent University Fund (PUF) following in 1876 to benefit universities. The PUF was endowed with public lands, the ownership of which the state retained by terms of the 1845 annexation treaty between the Republic of Texas and the United States. While the PSF was first funded by an appropriation from the state legislature, it also received public lands at the same time that the PUF was created. The first SWF established for a sovereign state is the Kuwait Investment Authority, a commodity SWF created in 1953 from oil revenues before Kuwait gained independence from the United Kingdom. According to many estimates, Kuwait's fund is now worth approximately US$600 billion. Another early registered SWFs is the Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund of Kiribati. Created in 1956, when the British administration of the Gilbert Islands in Micronesia put a levy on the export of phosphates used in fertilizer, the fund has since then grown to $520 million.