Amit's Blog

  Part 4 – India as a prominent destination for SWFs   “It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.” - Theodore Roosevelt India is at a stage in its development cycle where it is hungry for investments. Steady growth over the last 30 years has propelled India to a large economy of USD 2.7 trillion. It is now at par with The UK and France and only Germany, Japan, China and The USA are larger. India is still a low-income country and has considerable headroom for growth. Its demographics are favorable and are expected to be favorable for another 25-30 years as the working-age population is forming a bulge and the elderly are still at about 6.5% of the population. Many SWFs have already been active in India, either directly or via PE funds. SWFs and PPFs have mostly focused on developed markets and among the Emerging markets, China has been the favored destination for the last 2 decades. However, India has become a major recip...

  Part 3 – Singapore and a few more prominent SWFs "Returns matter a lot. It's our capital." — Abigail Johnson SWF of Singapore Singapore is similar to Norway in terms of population. However, unlike Norway, it is a small area being a city-state. Also, unlike Norway, Singapore is not a resource-based economy. The foundation of Singapore is Trade and Logistics. It has the second-largest container port in the world in terms of traffic and has a well-developed financial market. GIC Private Limited is the sovereign wealth fund established by the Government of Singapore in 1981 to manage Singapore's foreign reserves. Its mission is to preserve and enhance the international purchasing power of the reserves, with the aim to achieve good long-term returns above global inflation over the investment time horizon of 20 years. GIC invests internationally in developed market equities, emerging market equities, nominal bonds and cash, inflation-linked bonds, private equity, ...

  Part 2 - The story of the Norwegian SWF and The SWF of China "With a good perspective on history, we can have a better understanding of the past and present, and thus a clear vision of the future." — Carlos Slim Helu The Norway Story The Sovereign Wealth Fund of Norway is one of the largest and the most talked about. The story of its evolution gives valuable insights on institution building. It wasn’t built in one day as a masterstroke. Rather, processes were put in motion which played out over a couple of decades. It continues to evolve and has a high level of stakeholder participation. When oil production started in Norway in the early 1970s, the government there was aware of the risks to the domestic economy. The oil shock of the seventies also occurred then. Unlike the Persian Gulf states, Norway already was a developed economy without oil. It was also known that the oil reserves would not last more than 50 years. Therefore, from an early stage, the government w...