GROWTH OF SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS SEEN AS POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Davos, Switzerland, 24 January 2008 – The growing financial clout of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) – government-controlled vehicles created to invest the foreign currency reserves of many major oil producers and other exporters – should be welcomed, not opposed, by global policy-makers, panellists at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008 agreed today.
The rising importance of these funds – as seen by their recent investments in troubled financial institutions in the US and Europe – has attracted widespread media attention, fuelling public concern about their potential political influence. Yet, for the most part, these fears bear no relation to the funds’ actual behaviour. “These are among the most professional investors in the world,” noted Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Blackstone Group, USA. “In our experience, there is virtually no difference between going to a sovereign fund [for investment capital] and going to a state pension fund in the US.”
Schwarzman was speaking at a panel session entitled “Myths and Realities of Sovereign Wealth Funds”. The panel also included fund managers from Kuwait and Norway, key government officials from the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and a noted economist and former US Treasury Secretary. For the most part, these participants agreed that the SWFs represent a valuable pool of stable, long-term capital, and have reduced, rather than increased, capital market volatility.
That role will grow more valuable as the assets controlled by the SWFs continue to increase, said Richard S. Fuld Jr, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Lehman Brothers, USA. Sovereign funds, he noted, now hold an estimated US$ 2.5 trillion in assets. However, that does not include another US$ 8 trillion held by similar government-owned entities such as exchange rate stabilization funds – making the combined assets roughly the same size as those managed by the US mutual fund industry. If high oil prices continue to channel surplus funds into the coffers of the major exporting countries, sovereign investments could reach US$ 15 trillion within the next five years. This growth, he said, will inevitably make the SWFs major players in the global capital markets. “They need the capital markets to function and the capital markets need the liquidity they provide.”
This role may make the SWFs the targets of a political backlash in recipient countries, particularly the United States, participants acknowledged, citing the 2006 public outcry over the acquisition of US port operations by a Dubai-based entity. To date, however, criticism of the SWFs has been based on concerns about investment actions they might take in the future, rather than any actual abuses, several participants complained. “The attitude seems to be that sovereign investors are guilty until they are proven innocent,” said Muhammad S. Al Jasser, Vice-Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. By smoothing out the consumption spending of the oil-exporting countries, he noted, the SWFs not only contribute to domestic economic stability but to the stability of the global economy as well.
If policy-makers are truly concerned about financial instability, they should look to other investors, not the SWFs, argued Bader M. Al Sa'ad, Managing Director, Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), Kuwait. “Have you ever seen a sovereign fund, one which is leveraged 20 or 30 times, force a central bank to devalue its currency? No. So there is no real substance here.” Al Jassar, meanwhile, noted that despite numerous financial crises involving hedge funds, financial regulators have been deeply reluctant to subject them to tighter supervision or other restrictions, because of the potential impact on market liquidity. That same balanced approach, he argued, should be applied to the SWFs.
Concerns about the potential influence of the SWFs are not entirely unfounded, replied former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University, USA. For example, he said, sovereign funds often stress their long-term objectives and their desire to be passive, rather than active, shareholders. But this same reluctance could be a boon to entrenched corporate management. He also cited the possibility that the SWFs might become involved in the foreign exchange markets, something which “would probably not be conducive to successful relationships between nations.” For this reason, he added, the SWFs should support the establishment of a voluntary code of conduct, one that would clearly state their willingness to avoid speculative abuses and keep politics out of their investment decisions. “If we believe in free markets, shouldn’t we have some kind of guidelines for transactions that have an element, if only a small element, of cross-border nationalization?” Summers asked.
The need for standards cuts both ways, argued Robert M. Kimmitt, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Recipient countries need to make it clear that they will not block investments from foreign sources, including the SWFs, merely on political grounds. G7 leaders, he noted, have asked the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to work with both sovereign investors and recipients of that investment to develop voluntary guidelines. Drafts of these standards should be ready for review by the autumn IMF/World Bank meetings, he said.
The United States, Kimmitt added, continues to welcome foreign investment and oppose barriers to cross-border capital flows. Despite the controversy over the Dubai ports deal, the US government has not objected to any of the more than 200 proposed transactions it has reviewed since that time. “So far as we can see, these investments have been made on commercial, not political grounds. We welcome that type of investment, whether it is from an SWF or anyone else.”
Fonte:
World Economic Forum