Welcome the weekend, everybody. Here’s the latest news for your reading enjoyment:
- Political Risk: The Canada Pension Plan is concerned about its dealings with increasingly unfriendly investment regimes ... in Canada.
- Tech Transfers: And the latest SWF to set up shop in Silicon Valley is ... Kazakhstan’s National Welfare Fund. Good timing. The NWF will get to enjoy the complete and full experience of a bubble bursting.
- Quote du Jour: “Investment consultants, the number crunchers claimed, were powerful, pervasive — and useless.”
- New SWFs: I endorse New Caledonia’s plans for a new sovereign wealth fund, as I believe we can all benefit from going to a conference on SWFs in New Caledonia.
- Roadie: Quebec’s CDPQ just bought a few roads in Mexico for $2.4 billion. I’m going long roads.
- Overseas Expansion: Two Canadian Giants — CPPIB and CDPQ — are setting up shop in Mumbai.
- Rumors: There are reports that an unnamed Abu Dhabi sovereign fund is investing in Spotify. (Abu Dhabi is probably the only city on earth where that sentence only reduces the number of SWFs it could be to five candidates: ADIA, ADIC, IPIC, EIA and Mubadala.)
- Africa I: Angola’s sovereign fund will allocate $1.4 billion to African investments in mining, timber, agriculture and healthcare.
- Africa II: Norway’s SWF is “pouring more of its cash into Africa to capture some of the fastest growth in the global economy.” About time.
- The Fee Machine: NJ plans a “forensic audit” of the hundreds of millions in fees and bonuses paid to private companies. Here. We. Go.
- Governance: Abu Dhabi’s IPIC and its sub Aabar take heat for shady governance practices around overseas investments.
- Diversification: Korea’s $5B Government Employees Pension Service (GEPS) plans to double its overseas investments by year end.
- China: Singapore’s Temasek is the single largest foreign investor in Chinese banks.
- Iran: The Oman Investment Fund is excited by the prospect of normalized relations with Iran.
Have a great weekend!
