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Vidhi Chhaochharia
(University of Miami)
and
Luc Laeven*
(International Monetary Fund, CEPR, and ECGI)
Abstract: Sovereign wealth funds have emerged as an important investor of global equity,
attracting growing attention. Despite concerns that sovereign wealth fund investments may serve
political objectives and be in conflict with national interests, little is known about the investment
objectives and performance of sovereign wealth funds. We collect new data on foreign equity
investments by sovereign wealth funds. We find that sovereign wealth funds largely invest to
diversify away from industries at home but that they do so predominantly in countries that share
the same culture, suggesting their investment rules are not entirely driven by profit maximizing
objectives. Share prices of firms respond favorably when sovereign investment funds acquire
stakes, in part because these investments often take place when firms are in financial distress.
However, the long-run performance of equity investments by sovereign wealth funds tends to be
poor, consistent with imperfect portfolio diversification and poor corporate governance.
* Corresponding author: Luc Laeven, Senior Economist, Research Department, International Monetary Fund, 700
19th Street, N.W., 20431 Washington, DC. Tel. 202-623-9020. Fax: 202-623-4740. E-mail: llaeven@imf.org. We
are grateful to numerous colleagues at the International Monetary Fund for useful discussions and comments. We
would like to thank Supreet Arora and Masha Galeb for excellent research assistance. This paper’s findings,
interpretation, and conclusion are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the
International Monetary Fund, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.
1. Introduction
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have emerged as an important investor of global equity,
owned investment funds, are currently estimated at about US$ 2 to 3 trillion, and are expected to
reach about US$10 trillion over the next decade (IMF 2008). In principle, the fact that SWFs are
looking abroad for higher returns and asset diversification should be encouraged, as it should
improve the efficiency of global asset allocation. However, some have expressed concerns about
the transparency of SWFs, their investment strategies, and that their investments may be affected
by political objectives. One specific concern is that SWFs may target strategic industries, and
that such investments conflict with national interests of host countries. There are also concerns
about the expanded role of governments (through government-owned funds) in global capital
markets (see, for example, Johnson, 2007; Summers, 2007; and Gieve, 2008).1
Yet, this debate takes place while not much is known about the investment objective of
SWFs, their asset allocation, and the performance of their investments. This is mainly because of
a lack of disclosure and transparency on the part of most SWFs. This is particularly problematic
given concerns that SWFs’ objectives deviate from long-run profit maximization, with possible
This paper adds to our knowledge about the investment objectives and performance of
SWFs by collecting data on the asset allocation of sovereign wealth funds, focusing on their
investments in listed companies. We assess whether and how the investment portfolio of SWFs
differs from the market portfolio, and quantify the immediate and long-run valuation effects of
SWF investments.
1
In response to these concerns, multilateral organizations such as the IMF and OECD have started work on
developing best practices and investment policies for SWFs (see IMF 2008 and OECD 2008).
1
Our paper has several key findings. First, we find that SWFs when investing abroad tend
to invest in countries that share the same religion and in different industries than those found at
home, suggesting that SWFs tend to look for industry-specific diversification but while doing so
bias their investments to similar cultures. The latter investment rule clearly is strictly speaking
We also find that the announcement effect of SWF investments in listed equities is
positive, in part because these investments often take place when firms are in financial distress.
However, the long-run performance of SWFs investments tends to be poor. The three-year buy-
and-hold return of SWF investments is 7.2 percentage points lower on average than the market
return, consistent with imperfect portfolio diversification and poor corporate governance, such as
The paper is part of an emerging literature on the growth and performance of SWFs, and
associated concerns. Truman (2007) has raised concerns about the lack of transparency of SWFs,
including their size, and has called for more disclosure of their investment holdings and
strategies.2 Truman (2008) ranks some major SWFs on counts of their governance, transparency,
and accountability. Gilson and Milhaupt (2008) propose the suspension of voting rights of SWFs
to mitigate concerns that SWFs as government-controlled funds will influence firm strategy in
ways that are not aligned with shareholder maximization and to reduce the risk of a protectionist
response on the part of the host government. Fotak et al. (2008) collect data on 75 SWF
investments and find that these investments tend to exhibit positive abnormal returns upon
2
Such calls for increased disclosure go beyond a more general call for improved governance rules, following recent
corporate debacles in the US and elsewhere, that led to new regulation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in
the United States. See Chhaochharia and Grinstein (2007) for an assessment of the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley
rules on governance and firm valuation.
2
announcement but significantly negative long-term abnormal returns, consistent with our
findings.
With SWFs emerging as a new class of potentially activist (institutional) investors, our
paper is also related to the literature on shareholder activism and institutional ownership. This
literature has mostly focused on US institutional investors and has failed to identify systematic
effects of institutional ownership on firm value (Karpoff, 2001). Del Guercio and Hawkins
(1999) find that pension funds are successful at monitoring and promoting changes in target
firms, while others report that institutional owners are largely ineffective as monitors (Wahal,
1996; Gillan and Starks, 2000) and do not enhance shareholder value by monitoring firms
(Karpoff et al., 1996). Some papers find that institutional shareholders reduce firm performance
either because they do not have adequate monitoring skills or because their objectives conflict
with value maximization (Carleton et al., 1998; Woidtke, 2002). Only a minority of studies finds
evidence that institutional owners increase shareholder value by monitoring firms (Smith, 1996).
Giannetti and Laeven (2008) find that the effects of institutional investment on firm performance
depend on the size and independence of institutional investors. In particular, they find that firm
valuation improves if large funds acquire stakes, consistent with large funds being more likely to
incur monitoring costs than small funds. They also find that firm valuation decreases when funds
related to financial institutions and industrial groups increase their shareholdings, consistent with
the presence of conflicts of interest. Ferreira and Matos (2008) also find that firms with higher
monitoring. Given that SWFs tend to be large but as a government-controlled entity may face
conflicts of interest, these findings are ambiguous about the predicted effect of SWF investment
on firm valuation.
3
Theory also offers conflicting predictions about the monitoring efforts we can expect
SWFs to perform, and thus the impact of SWF investment on firm performance. On the one
hand, theory predicts that large investors such as SWFs tend to more actively monitor firms,
enhancing firm value (Shleifer and Vishny, 1986). On the other hand, theory predicts that
investors with objectives that are in conflict with maximization of shareholder value will not
actively monitor the firm (Chen et al., 2007), or could potentially even expropriate resources
from the firm at the expense of minority shareholders (La Porta et al., 2002). In a similar vein,
being government-controlled entities, SWF investors could have conflicting interests with
This paper is also related to the literature on international portfolio allocation, including
research on the home bias of investment and the determinants of foreign asset allocation. Over
the past decades, most countries have lifted investment restrictions, which has fostered trading in
assets abroad. Despite potential benefits from international portfolio diversification4, investors
typically still invest a large fraction of their wealth in domestic assets, even when there are no
official investment restrictions.5 This home bias of financial assets has been well documented in
the literature.6 Similarly, investors often prefer to invest in familiar investment opportunities as
opposed to foreign or unfamiliar investments (Huberman, 2001; Grinblatt and Keloharju, 2001).7
3
For example, SWFs could steer the firm to support certain political objectives that are in conflict with shareholder
maximization. Also, SWFs as shareholders could extract proprietary information from the firm and employ this
elsewhere in the interest of the home country but at the expense of the value of the firm.
4
For instance, Harvey (1995) shows that from a U.S. perspective, large benefits can be attained from investing in
emerging markets. See also Obstfeld (1994). Others argue that the gains from international diversification can
largely be achieved indirectly at home through investments in stocks of multinational firms (Rowland and Tesar,
2004) or country funds and depositary receipts (Errunza et al., 1999).
5
Investment restrictions impose a tax to invest in or hold foreign assets (see Black, 1974, and Stulz, 1981).
6
See, for instance, French and Poterba (1991), Lewis (1996), Baxter and Jermann (1997), and Li (2004). Coval and
Moskowitz (1999) show local investors tend to invest mostly in companies that are located nearby.
7
From the firm’s perspective, there is also recent work on the determinants of international capital raising activities
(Henderson, Jegadeesh, and Weisbach, 2006; Gozzi, Levine, and Schmukler, 2008; Kim and Weisbach, 2008).
4
Several governments with large SWFs have recently encouraged their funds to diversify
The move from fixed income to domestic and foreign equity, together with the increase is fund
size on the back of rising oil and other commodity prices, has been the key driver of the
Country characteristics such as culture and physical distance have also been found to
determine global capital flows, investor protection, and corporate governance, and thus global
asset allocation. For example, Portes and Rey (2005) find that global equity flows are in large
part determined by geographical distance, while Stulz and Williamson (2003) find that religion
explains differences in investor protection better than other country factors. Doidge et al. (2007)
shows that country characteristics account for a large part of the variation in firm-level
governance across countries, in part because it is costly for firms to adhere to stricter governance
standards than those imposed by the country. We would therefore expect cultural differences,
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents a theoretical framework for our
analysis of investment allocation of SWFs. Section 3 introduces our newly collected dataset on
foreign equity investments of SWFs and provides descriptive statistics. Section 4 presents a
detailed empirical analysis of the geographic allocation of SWFs’ equity portfolios and its
determinants. Section 5 presents our empirical analysis of the immediate and long-run valuation
5
2. Theory
Chan, Covrig, and Ng (2005), in their version of the Cooper and Kaplanis (1986) model, present
a theoretical framework that is excellent for our analysis of foreign biases in the investment
allocation of SWFs. Assume that a representative investor in country i maximizes the expected
subject to
wi′V wi = σ 2 (2)
wi′ I = 1 , (3)
where wi is a column vector containing portfolio weights, with wij the proportion of individual
i’s total wealth invested in risky securities of country j, R is a column vector of pre-tax expected
returns, ci is a column vector of deadweight costs, with cij the deadweight cost to investor i of
investing in country j, V is the variance-covariance matrix of gross returns of the risky securities,
Setting the derivative of the Lagrangean of the above maximization problem with respect
wi = (V −1 / ρ )( R − ci − λi I ) (4)
where
λi = [ I ′V −1 ( R − ci ) − ρ ] / I ′V −1 I
and ρ and λi are the Lagrange multipliers on equations (2) and (3), respectively.
Aggregating the individual portfolio holdings gives the market clearing condition for the
6
Σ π i wi = w∗ , (5)
where π i is the proportion of world wealth owned by country i, w∗ is a column vector of world
market capitalization shares, with wi∗ country i’s share in world market capitalization. Defining z
(5), we obtain:
With non-zero deadweight costs, the portfolio holdings of each investor will deviate from
the world market portfolio. To examine the deviation, consider the simple case where V is a
diagonal matrix with all variances equal to a constant v. In this case, the portfolio weight of
investor i in country j will deviate from the world market portfolio according to:
where z′ci can be interpreted as the weighted average marginal deadweight cost for investor i,
Σπ k ckj as the weighted average marginal deadweight cost for investors investing in country j,
It follows that the share invested by investor i in country j is affected by the difference
between the deadweight cost for investor i investing in country j, cij , and the weighted average
deadweight cost for world investors investing in country j, Σπ k ckj . If cij is significantly larger
than Σπ k ckj , investor i underweights country j. Alternatively, if cij is significantly smaller than
Σπ k ckj , investor i exhibits a positive foreign bias to investing in country j and overweights
7
fij = α i + α j + xij′ β + ε ij , (8)
where fij = ( wij − w∗j ) , α i = ( z′ci − z′Σπ i ci ) / ρ v , α j = Σπ k ckj / ρ v , xij′ β = −cij / ρ v , and ε ij is an
error term, with xij a vector of explanatory variables that determine the overall deadweight cost
(or benefit) to investor i of investing in country j. In the literature, such explanatory variables
traditionally relate to transaction costs or taxes (e.g., Black, 1974; Cooper and Kaplanis, 1986).
More recently, other variables related to institutional development, investor protection, and
familiarity have also been considered (e.g., Chan, Covrig, and Ng, 2005). While traditional
variables such as taxes and transaction costs present deadweight costs to investors, resulting in a
negative foreign bias, similarity in institutions or culture across countries could actually present a
net benefit to investors of investing in a particular country. Familiarity arising from common
languages or religions is a case in point. For example, an Arab investor may prefer to invest in
countries where Arabic is the official language or where the majority of the population is
Muslim. Such ulterior motives may be particularly relevant for SWFs whose investment strategy
3.1 Data
Our sample consists of investments by a total of 12 large SWFs from around the world. SWFs
come in different forms and serve different objectives. The heterogeneous group of SWFs
includes stabilization funds (whose primary objective is to provide insurance against commodity
price shocks), savings funds for future generations, reserve investment corporations,
development funds, and contingent pension reserve funds. We broadly define SWFs as
substantial amount in foreign equity. For Norway, we therefore include the Government Pension
Fund-Global (formerly the Government Petroleum Fund), which invests in foreign equity, but do
not include the Government Pension Fund-Norway (formerly the National Insurance Scheme
Fund), which invests solely in Norwegian companies. For Saudi Arabia, the investments
included in the sample are part of the investment tranches of this country’s central bank. We
obtain this list and information from the SWF Institute (at the website swfinstitute.org).
For each SWF, we first identify their investment arms and affiliated companies. For
example, the main investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is the Mubadala
Development Company and the main investment arm of Dubai World is called Istithmar. The
SEC filings of companies in which there are SWF investments help us identify most of these
investment arms. We further augment this data by searching SWF-specific websites for
We then collect data on equity investments for each SWF, including the timing and size
of the investment, using a variety of sources.8 Some of the funds, like the Government Pension
Fund of Norway, Khazanah Nasional, and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation
have incomplete information about their equity investments on their company websites. We
augment this list by browsing the complete US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
database of 13G and 10K filings of individuals firms for shareholdings by any of the SWFs (or
their investment arms) included in our sample. Data collected by the SWF Institute, available
from swfinstitute.org, is used to extend the list further. We complete the list of SWF investments
through keyword searches in the Factiva and Lexis-Nexis news databases, using “sovereign
8
The complete dataset of SWF investments is available upon request from the authors.
9
wealth fund” and the name of the fund (or investment arm) as keywords. Due to the lack of
transparency at most SWFs, coverage is by construction sparse and incomplete. Still, we are
confident that we have identified the majority of SWF investments in public equity that have in
For each investment we collect information on the date of investment, the amount
invested, and the percentage of equity acquired. When information on the date and amount
invested is not available from the primary source, we search through the Factiva database and
major newspapers (including the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal) to locate the date
and amount of investment. We are able to collect information on 260 SWF investments. This list
includes investments in both private and public equity. We do not have complete information on
all 260 investments, and the subsequent analyses are therefore limited to a smaller number of
observations.
For the Government Pension Fund of Norway, we collect time-series information on their
equity investments and associated voting rights from annual reports for each year during the
period 1998 to 2007. The annual reports only report the end-year investment holdings and we are
therefore unable to identify the exact investment date for these investments.
For each of the equity investments for which we have the exact announcement date we
then collect daily stock prices, equity returns, trading volumes, and market capitalization from
sample. For each of these investments we collect information on the relevant benchmark market
index for the country of investment. For example, for investments in the UK the FTSE 100 is
used as the relevant market index. We also collect firm-level accounting data for these
10
investments from Worldscope. The data is supplemented by searching through online SEC
For our bilateral investment analysis we require stock market capitalization of each of the
invested countries in our sample. Such data is obtained from the World Bank’s annual World
Development Reports. As an alternative benchmark for the size of the host equity market, we use
the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices obtained from MSCI Barra.
Corporate governance information on the SWFs is collected from the Peterson Institute
for International Economics report by Truman (2008). We also collected data for the Linaburg-
Maduell transparency index for each SWF developed by the SWF Institute and available from
their website at swfinstitute.org. Since the results for the two indices are qualitatively similar we
only report those results obtained when using the governance and transparency scores from the
Truman report.
Table 1 reports descriptive statistics on the main SWFs in the world, including their name,
country of origin, asset size, year of inception, and size of the fund relative to the total foreign
reserves of the country. We obtain this information from the SWF Institute. We also report for
each fund the number of equity investments, the dollar amount invested in equity, and the
fraction of total assets invested in equity, all estimates based on our data collection efforts.
The largest SWF by far is the fund of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority with about
US$ 875 billion in assets as of February 2008, of which about 8 percent is invested in equity.
Other countries with SWFs in excess of US$ 100 billion include China, Kuwait, Norway, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund-Global is with US$
132.8 billion at end-2007 in foreign equity by far the largest equity investor among SWFs.
11
Though some SWFs have been around for decades—the Kuwait Investment Authority
was established in 1953, and the funds established by Abu Dhabi and Singapore date back to the
1970’s—, the number and size of SWFs has been rising fast in recent years, spurred by record
commodity prices and rapid accumulation of foreign reserves. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and
the United Arab Emirates all have set up a new SWF, and Bolivia, Brazil, India, Japan, and
Thailand all have announced plans to establish a SWF in the near future.
Except for the Government Pension Fund of Norway that publishes its holdings annually,
SWFs in our sample are not required to disclose their portfolio holdings. For the Government
Pension Fund of Norway we collect information on their holdings from 1998-2007 and have a
complete breakdown of their equity investments. For the other funds in our sample our coverage
ranges from an estimated 8 to 26 percent of total equity. Table 1 gives the percentage of equity
We have data on equity investments, including the timing, for a total of 12 SWFs for
which we are able to identify such information. Table 2 reports the geographic breakdown for the
listed equity investments by SWFs included in our sample. The geographic diversification of the
equity portfolio of several SWFs is limited, with most funds exhibiting substantial home bias,
and with investments outside the home country and the US and UK either low or even zero for
all funds except the Norwegian SWF. This suggests that SWFs exhibit preference for
investments at home or, if abroad, for investments in large and liquid stock markets such as the
US and UK. It is interesting to note that Qatar Investment Authority and Dubai World invest a
disproportionately larger share in the UK than the US compared to other SWFs, with both having
large investments in BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world in terms of stock
12
market capitalization. Such preference may be related to weaker disclosure rules for large
shareholdings in the UK compared to the US (see also Doidge, Karolyi, and Stulz, 2008).
Table 3 reports the industry breakdown of equity investments in our sample. SWFs
appear to predominantly invest in the energy and financial sectors. This bias is particularly
strong for SWFs from oil producing countries. For example, the largest investment of Abu Dhabi
Investment Council is in Statoil, a major Norwegian oil company, representing 38.5 percent of
its foreign equity portfolio. Investments in consumer goods and manufacturing are fairly limited.
The fact that the home countries of some of the largest SWFs are major oil exporters could
explain the relatively high share of investments in oil and related industries. The large fraction of
investments in financials is largely due to SWFs’ recent capital injections in distressed US and
European investment banks (see Appendix 1). The Singapore SWF alone invested a total of US$
16.5 billion in two major investment banks (Citibank and UBS). These banks sought additional
capital following due to their massive writedowns and losses on US subprime mortgages and
While the majority of SWFs’ equity investments are in global listed equities, some SWF
also have large holdings of private equity, though such information is less well documented. For
about half the funds in our sample, we are able to identify such private equity investments. The
Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Qatar Investment Authority, and Dubai World funds appear to
be particularly active private equity investors, with substantial private equity stakes in well-
known companies such as Ferrari and the Carlyle Group. For the Government of Singapore
Investment Corporation, China Investment Corporation, and Temasek Holdings we identify only
a small number of private equity investments. Given the lack of information on such private
equity investments, our analysis focuses on public equity investments. Also, to assess the
13
performance of SWF investments we require equity return data that are available only for their
Summary statistics on the foreign investment allocation of SWFs indicate that SWFs on
average invest disproportionately less in foreign equities compared to a benchmark for global
asset allocation (such as the MSCI World Equity index), and thus exhibit strong home bias. For
example, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has only about 11.5 percent of equity invested in
its home country. In part this may be due to restrictions imposed by home authorities on
investments in foreign equities. For example, SWFs of China and several Middle Eastern
countries have only recently allowed significant investments abroad.9 Also, the Middle Eastern
SWFs have traditionally focused more on emerging markets and private equity projects in the
Table 4 ranks SWFs depending on their perceived transparency and governance using the
transparency and governance scores constructed for each SWF by Truman (2008). The
transparency score is based on three broad categories, including the degree of public disclosure
of annual and quarterly reports, the degree of public disclosure of investments (including
information on size, return, type, location, instrument, and currency composition of investments),
and the extent of public audits (including whether the fund has a regular audit, whether the audit
report is published, and whether the audit is conducted independently). All binary variables
under the transparency categories are summed up to create a composite score. The transparency
score has a range from 0-12. The governance score is based on a number of factors, including the
role of the government in setting the investment strategy, the role of the manager in executing
investment strategy, guidelines for corporate responsibility, and whether the fund has ethical
9
See, for example, the Financial Times report “China Investment Corporation raises budget to $90bn” published on
April 25th, 2008.
14
guidelines for investments. Each of these binary variables are aggregated to create the
governance score. The governance score ranges between 0 and 4. We also create an overall
governance score for each fund that simply sums up the individual governance and transparency
scores.
The Government Pension Fund of Norway by far scores the highest on account of both
governance and transparency, followed by the New Mexico State Investment Office Trust and
Temasek funds. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Dubai World, and Qatar Investment
Authority rank the lowest, with a minimum score of zero for both governance and transparency.
In this section, we analyze the geographic allocation of SWFs’ equity portfolios and its
determinants. We start by estimating equation (8) to identify foreign biases in the investment
allocation of SWFs, much like a gravity model from the trade literature. As explanatory variables
for foreign biases in investment allocations we include several bilateral differences in country
traits (between home and host country), such as physical distance and cultural differences (or
As dependent variable, we use the log difference between the share of country j in total
equity investments by SWFs from country i and the share of country j in the world equity
market, or ln( wij / w∗j ) . For countries with multiple SWFs, we aggregate funds at the country
level. Note that we specify the dependent variable in log difference terms, following Chan,
Covrig, and Ng (2005). We compute country j’s share in the world equity market as the overall
share of country j equities in total world market capitalization (as reported by the World Bank’s
World Development Report), or as the weight of country j in the MSCI world equity index (both
15
as of end-2007). The number of observations is based on bilateral country pairs and hence is less
than the total number of investment announcement information collected. Variable ln( wij / w∗j )
denotes the foreign equity bias, and takes on a positive (negative) value if the fund’s equity
allocation to that particular country is overweight (underweight). For example, if the SWF of
country A has 11% of its total equity investments invested in firms in country B, but country B
has only a share of 10% in the MSCI World Index, then the foreign equity bias for this particular
country pair, ln( wAB / wB∗ ) , is 10%. The sample consists of investments in publicly listed and
traded equities only. We drop domestic investments from the sample and focus on the foreign
characteristics. Prior research has found that investors prefer to invest in familiar investment
Keloharju, 2001). We capture such preferences using a set of geographic and cultural distance
variables. First, we control for the distance between the capital cities of the home and host
country, where home country denotes the country of origin of the SWF and host country denotes
the country where the invest takes place. The distance data come from Gleditsch and Ward
(2001). We take the inverse of the distance in kilometers, as used by Acemoglu et al. (2008), and
consider this a measure of geographical closeness. In other words, our measure of geographic
closeness denotes the inverse distance (closeness) between home country i of a given SWF and
In terms of cultural variables, we have data on ethnicity, languages, and religion from
Acemoglu et al. (2008). All cultural variables are arranged such that they indicate similarity
between two countries, with higher scores denoting more similarity or proximity. Let l ∈ {1,.., L}
16
denote the total number of distinct languages (or ethnic groups, or religions) in the sample. Let
Following Acemoglu et al. (2008), we then define closeness of home country i and host country j
∑l S il S jl
in terms of ethnicity (or languages or religion) as the uncentered correlation .
(∑l S il2 )(∑l S 2jl )
Next, we control for whether or not the home and host country are major trading partners
using data on trade flows between the two countries. As our measure of closeness in terms of
trade we use trade (exports plus imports) between home country i and host country j in the year
2000 divided by total trade of home country i in the year 2000. Unlike the geographic distance
and cultural variables, the bilateral trade variable is not symmetric between countries but
depends on the home country of origin. Data on bilateral trade are from Acemoglu et al. (2008).
We also control for similarity in industrial structure, to allow for the possibility that
investors may have a preference for investing in industries that are familiar, or, alternatively, to
gauge potential for industry diversification. Similar to the cultural proximity variables, we
construct a variable that is the uncentered correlation between vectors of home and host country
shares of value added of different industries, based on the United Nations classification of
industries, to capture (the inverse of) industrial distance. We obtain data on industry value added
for our sample of countries from the United Nations Industrial Statistics database.
We also control for proxies of legal and financial using variables that have previously
been found to explain international patterns in portfolio allocation (see, for example, Chan et al.,
2005). These variables include the level of stock market development (proxied for by the ratio of
10
Data available upon request from the authors.
17
stock market capitalization to GDP), judicial efficiency, risk of expropriation, accounting
standards, and per capita income in the host country. We obtain data on stock market
capitalization and per capita GDP from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators
database. Data on judicial efficiency and accounting standards is from La Porta et al. (1998).
Data on expropriation risk is from the International Risk Country Guide. Summary statistics on
The results of the bilateral investment regressions are presented in Table 5. We report
results using alternative proxies for the weight of each country in the world portfolio, either
based on the country distribution of world market capitalization, the country weight in the MSCI
World Equity, or the country weight of US mutual funds. We use the US mutual fund allocation
as a benchmark for the global allocation of institutional investors that, like SWFs, tend to have
long-term investment horizons. We obtain data on the global asset allocation of US mutual funds
from EPFR Global, a company that provides fund flows and asset allocation data to financial
institutions around the world. The number of observations in each regression depends on the
benchmark used. The sample size drops from 67 to 59 when using the country weight of US
mutual funds as the benchmark, since this variable is missing for some countries.
Column 1 presents regression results with foreign bias with respect to the world market
portfolio as dependent variable. We find that SWFs tend to be overweight in countries with
which they have religious affinity. For example, Middle Eastern SWFs that originate from
their foreign equity portfolios to firms in countries that also have significant Muslim populations.
We find a similar positive association between ethnic and linguistic closeness and foreign
investment bias. The economic effect of these results is significant. For example, a one standard
18
deviation increase in Religious Closeness (0.36) would imply an increase in foreign bias of 0.69
(=1.92*0.36). This is significant given the standard deviation of foreign bias of 1.54.
Results also indicate that SWFs on average tend to go underweight in countries that are
major trading partners. If the host country takes account of a large portion of overall trade of the
home country (where the SWF is located), investment tends to be disproportionately smaller.
This suggests that in the case of SWFs investments, finance does not follow trade. For example,
according to our bilateral trade data Europe is the main trading partner for many of the Middle
We also find a negative association between the industrial closeness and foreign bias
variables, suggesting that SWFs tend to diversify into different industries than those found at
home when investing abroad. This result does not support the view that SWFs from oil-rich
countries tend to invest in oil-related industries abroad to increase their power and influence in
oil-related industries.
The results are broadly similar when using the two alternative proxies for the world
equity portfolio: the MSCI World Equity index and the country weight of US mutual funds
(Columns 2 and 3), except that the negative effect of industrial closeness is no longer statistically
significant when we use the country allocation of US mutual funds as the benchmark for a
with an objective to diversify globally. It scores highest among SWFs on account of both the
governance and transparency scores developed by Truman (2008) and invests in a globally
diversified portfolio of equities. We can therefore use the asset allocation of the Norwegian SWF
19
The regression in Column 4 repeats the regression in Column 1 but excludes the
Norwegian SWF from the sample. This reduces the sample to 38 observations. We continue to
find a negative impact of religious closeness and a positive impact of trade closeness on foreign
bias, though industrial closeness and the ethnic and linguistic variables no longer enter
significantly.
In Column 5, we use the country weight of the Norwegian SWF as the benchmark
allocation for SWFs. In this case, we exclude the investment allocation of the Norwegian SWF
from this analysis. We now find that only religious closeness and industrial closeness are
of our sample of SWFs that includes both well-governed funds such as the Norwegian SWF and
SWFs with poor disclosure and transparency. Also, some SWFs may exhibit strong home bias,
independent of differences in host country characteristics, for reasons that we have not controlled
To account for systemic differences of foreign bias of particular SWFs, we include home-
country fixed effects (Column 6). The results are similar though the coefficient on the language
To further account for differences in governance of SWFs, we split the sample depending
on whether the governance score of the SWF as computed by Truman (2008) is above or below
the sample median and repeat the bilateral investment regressions (Columns 7 and 8). We find
stark differences in the drivers of foreign bias between these two groups of funds. We find an
industrial diversification effect only for funds with above-median governance scores, while the
religious bias is only present for funds with below-median governance scores. In addition, we no
20
longer find a trading partner effect for funds with below-median governance scores, and for
funds with above-median governance scores this effect changes sign, that is, such funds allocate
a disproportionately larger fraction of their portfolio to countries that are major trading partners.
For robustness, we repeat the analysis by replacing the host country institutional variables
(stock market development, judicial efficiency, risk of expropriation, accounting standards, and
per capita income) in terms of bilateral differences between home and host countries to mimic
the construction of the closeness variables. This does not alter our main findings. Clustering of
standard errors by investment fund also does not alter our main findings.
For the Norwegian SWF, we have detailed time-series data on foreign investments for the
period 1998-2007, extracted from the fund’s annual reports over this period. Given that the
Norwegian SWF is perceived to be the industry leader in terms of disclosure, governance, and
foreign diversification, a more detailed study of the Norwegian SWF foreign asset allocation
Table 6 reports regressions results of the foreign bias exhibited by the Norwegian SWF
using data on foreign asset allocation for the period 1998-2007. We use the country distribution
of world market capitalization as proxy for the global asset allocation of a representative global
investor. We use the same explanatory variables as used in Table 5 except that the Ethnic and
Language Closeness variables are dropped because they take on a value of zero for each country
other than Norway. We present regression results without year fixed effects ( Column 1) and
Contrary to the results for other SWFs in Table 5, we do not find that the Norwegian
SWF exhibits cultural biases based on religious closeness in its foreign asset allocation. Instead,
we find that the Norwegian SWF exhibits a bias toward markets that are physically nearby, offer
21
industrial diversification, and have low risk of expropriation. These results are in line with
previously established results in the literature on home and foreign bias for mutual funds and
institutional investors (see, for example, Chan et al. (2005), suggesting that the Norwegian SWF
Overall, the results indicate that the investment allocation of many SWFs is in part driven
by cultural differences, notably similarity in religion. Given that differences in religion should
not be of first order importance in determining the asset allocation of rational investors, this
anomaly suggests that SWFs have ulterior objectives when investing abroad that are not
However, not all SWFs exhibit such anomalies. Cultural variables do not appear to play a
significant role in the foreign asset allocation of the Norwegian SWF, a well-governed SWF for
which we have detailed, time-series data on foreign investments. Instead, the Norwegian SWF
exhibits foreign bias to markets that are physically nearby, offer industrial diversification, and
Next, we analyze the immediate and long-run valuation effects of SWF investments to gauge
their impact on firm performance and assess SWFs’ own investment performance.
To gauge the immediate valuation effect of SWF investments, we perform an event study of
abnormal equity returns around the time of the announcement of equity investments by SWFs.
11
Of course these results are only suggestive. It cannot be ruled out based on this analysis that SWFs have
consistently superior knowledge of certain industries or firms in certain countries that could rationalize and validate
their investment choices.
22
Table 7 reports the univariate results of this event study for different event windows. Our
sample consists of 89 firms for which we have the exact announcement date for the investment
made by the SWF. The event study methodology is similar to Karpoff and Malatesta (1989). We
use a simple market model to compute the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) relative to the
market returns for each destination country. Abnormal returns are calculated as the difference
between actual and predicted returns based on the market model. We sum over abnormal returns
to calculate cumulative abnormal returns. For each event, the market model is estimated over the
period 281 to 80 trading days prior to the event date. For each market, we use the return on a
commonly observed stock market index as proxy for the market return (e.g., for the US we use
the CRSP value-weighted return index, and for the UK we use the FTSE 100 index). Daily return
data are collected from Datastream for each of these market indices and used in the market
Column 1 reports the average CAR of these 89 SWF investments for different event
windows over the period [t-40, t+10], where t denotes the announcement date and the event
window is expressed in number of days. The results indicate that SWF investments generate
substantial, positive CARs during the 10 trading days prior to the announcement of the
investment. For example, the average CAR is 1.03% over the period [t-10, t-5]. This suggests
that the investment is often already known to the market several days in advance of the official
announcement. CARs are not statistically different from zero for event windows prior to t-10 and
post t+2. The average CAR over the extended period [t-20, t+10] is 1.57%.
To make sure these results are not driven by US firms that constitute a large part of the
sample, Column 2 reports the average CAR after dropping US firms. This reduces the sample to
23
Next, we drop banks that received large capital injections from SWFs after reporting
losses on subprime-related assets. These capital injections took place at a time when the capital
positions of these banks were under severe pressure due to large markdowns on mortgage-
backed securities. Stock prices may naturally react favorably to such capital injections at times of
financial distress and we want to make sure this is not driving the results. Exclusion of these
banks reduces the sample to 83 firms. The results, reported in Column 3, are very similar.
Next, we distinguish between stakes from SWFs with above and below median
governance scores, based on the sum of the governance and transparency scores reported by
Truman (2008). We find that the average CARs is positive around the announcement during the
10 days prior to the announcement date, though the effect is larger for SWFs with above median
governance scores. The average CAR over the longer period [t-20, t+10] is 0.90% for SWFs with
above-median governance scores and 0.67% for SWFs with below-median governance scores.
Overall, we conclude that SWFs investments on average exhibit substantial, positive CARs.
Next, we employ regression analysis to study more closely the factors associated with
these positive CARs. First, we regress CARs on the cultural distance variables used earlier, the
log of per capita GDP of the host country of investment, and industry fixed effects. We exclude
investments from the Norwegian Government Pension Fund because they constitute a large share
of the sample and earlier results indicated that this fund’s investment allocation and governance
differs substantially from that of other SWFs. The sample size also drops on account of missing
data on ownership stakes and on whether the firms are cash constrained. The sample reduces
from 89 to 50 firms. The results are presented in Column 1 of Table 8. We use the CAR over the
event window [-20, 10] as dependent variable, though results are robust to using alternative event
24
windows as long as they include the period [-10, 2]. We find that none of these variables enters
significantly.
returns. The abnormal returns of SWF investments could be because SWFs tend to invest in
firms that are financially constrained, as in Hotchkiss and Mooradian (1997), who find positive
abnormal returns when vulture investors gain control of distressed firms, suggesting these
investors add value by disciplining managers of distressed firms. Alternatively, the abnormal
returns could be due to expectations about enhanced corporate governance, because SWFs often
become large owners in firms, reducing the shareholders’ monitoring costs of managers (as in
To assess CARs are positively associated with firms being financially distressed, we
include a measure of capital constraints based on the work by Kaplan and Zingales (1997),
Lamont et al. (2001), and Bergman and Jenter (2007). We compute two alternative versions of
this measure, as presented by Bergman and Jenter (2007), that differ in terms of whether or not
Tobin’s Q is included as variable. The first measure, KZQ, equals -1.002*(Cash flow/Lagassets)
0.283*Tobin’s Q, where Lagassets denotes the one-period lag of total assets. The second
measure, KZ, excludes the Tobin’s Q term from the KZQ measure. All components of these
capital constraints measures are winsorized at the 1% and 99% level. We include a Cash
Contrained dummy variable that takes a value of one if the KZ measure takes on a score above
the sample median, and zero otherwise. The results when adding the Cash Constrained dummy
variable are presented in Column 2 of Table 8. The results as qualitatively similar when using the
25
We find that CARs are positively associated with the capital constraints variable,
consistent with our hypothesis that share prices react favorably to an injection in capital when
SWFs invest in firms that are financially constrained. The economic size of the effect is large.
The average CAR of a capital constrained firm is 0.14% higher than the average CAR that is not
capital constrained.
After controlling for capital constraints, we also find that CARs are positively associated
with the logarithm of GDP per capita. To test the hypothesis that firms exhibit positive CARs
when SWFs take large stakes we include an Ownership Stake dummy variable that takes a value
of one if the SWF stake is larger than 1% of the firm’s total equity capital, and zero otherwise
(Column 3). We find that CARs are positively associated with the large owner dummy variable,
consistent with the hypothesis that large investors enhance firm value by monitoring firm
management (see Shleifer and Vishny, 1986). The economic size of the effect is large. The
average CAR of a firm with a large ownership stake (in excess of 1%) is 1.4% higher than the
After controlling for the size of the ownership stake, we also find that CARs are
positively associated with religious closeness, indicating that CARs are more positive if home
and host countries are more similar in terms of religious composition of their populations. This
could be because cultural familiarity mitigates concerns about conflicts between managers and
Next, we distinguish between SWFs depending on their governance scores, using a High
Governance dummy variable that takes a value of one for SWFs with above-median governance
scores according to the sum of the governance and transparency scores reported by Truman
26
(2008) to test whether the results are driven by difference in governance characteristics across
Finally, we include a Subprime dummy variable that takes on a value of one for
investments in banks that took place at a time when the capital positions of these banks were
under severe pressure due to large markdowns on mortgage-backed securities. Stock prices may
naturally react favorably to such capital injections at times of financial distress. However, it
The results are qualitatively similar when we include SWF-specific fixed effects, though
Overall, we find supporting evidence for the hypotheses that the positive abnormal
returns associated with SWF investments are in part due to expectations about enhanced
To assess whether there are any systematic patterns in the type of firms selected by
SWFs, in particular whether SWFs tend to target firms that are financially constrained, we
perform a matched sample analysis of firm characteristics for the firms included in the event
study. Our sample consists of 89 firms for which we have the exact announcement date for the
investment made by the SWF. For each of these firms, we identify close matches based on
country, industry (using Datastream’s industry classification for non-US firms and 1-digit US
SIC codes for US firms), year, and size (as measured by total sales). For investments made in
2008, matches are based on 2007 data because most firms have not yet reported any year 2008
financials. All accounting data are obtained from Compustat for US firms and from Datastream
and Worldscope for non-US firms. Each of the firms is matched by the average (median) of all
12
Since we exclude the Norway Pension Fund from these regressions, this High Governance dummy variable takes
a value of one of for the New Mexico State Investment Office and Temasek Holdings funds.
27
potential matches. Our final sample size reduces to 76 firms on account of not finding an
We perform the matched sample analysis on the bases of different firm characteristics.
First, we report the average Tobin’s Q of firms with SWF investments and their matched
counterparts. We calculate Tobin’s Q as the market-to-book value of assets, and use it as a proxy
for growth opportunities. Second, we report the average leverage of both sets of firms, with
leverage defined as debt to total assets. Third, we use the KZQ and KZ measures of capital
constraints introduced earlier. Table 9 reports sample averages for each variable, averages values
We find that the leverage and valuation (as measured by Tobin’s Q) of firms with SWF
investments is similar to that of their matched counterparts, but that such firms tend to be
relatively more financially constrained. We find this result across both measures of financial
constraints. These differences are not driven by differences in Tobin’s Q and leverage because
these the averages for these two variables are not significantly different between sampled firms
and their matched counterparts. These figures suggest that SWFs tend to invest in financially
constrained firms, consistent with the positive CARs of such investments reported earlier.
Given the tendency for SWFs to invest in financially constrained firms, it is noteworthy
to mention that countries often block large investments by foreign investors such as SWFs out of
nationalist and other political concerns. In 2005, for example, a United Arab Emirates-owned
company, Dubai Ports World, stirred controversy in the United States by purchasing P&O, a
British-owned shipping company, thus giving it control over parts of several U.S. port facilities.
A year after the acquisition, the company was forced to divest the US operations out of national
security concerns. Such political sentiment may be more favorable toward foreign bailouts of
28
distressed firms that otherwise would face bankruptcy. This may explain why SWFs, especially
from countries with different cultures, often take controlling stakes in firms at times of distress.
Well-known examples, included in our sample, are the investments in 2005 by the Abu Dhabi
Investment Authority in Spyker Cars of the Netherlands and Ferrari of Italy. Both companies
specialize in exclusive sports cars and faced financing issues at the time of the stock purchases
Given the positive CARs associated with SWF investments, it is natural to ask how well such
investments perform in the long run. To assess the long-run valuation effects of SWF
investments, we compute the buy-and-hold returns for each SWF investment in our sample
calculated over 1 year, 3 year and 5 year periods and aggregate these returns at the SWF level.
We calculate buy-and-hold returns using a simple market model of abnormal returns. We use
returns on the MSCI Global Equity index as proxy for the market return of a representative
global investor. We only include investments for which we have the exact investment date and
for which we have at least one year of historical data post the investment date. This reduces the
sample to 79 firm investments for the one-year buy-and-hold returns. For the three-year buy-and-
hold returns we require three years of return data after the investments, and as a result the sample
for these results drops to 74 firms. Similarly, for the five-year buy-and-hold returns, the sample
Despite the positive CARs around the announcement date, we find that SWF investments
exhibit negative buy-and-hold returns over a 5-year period following the initial investment of -
0.06% on average, though this return is not statistically significantly different from zero. Buy-
and-hold returns for individuals SWFs are mostly negative and in the case of the Abu Dhabi
29
Investment Council they are significantly negative at -19.1% over a period of 5-years. This is in
sharp contrast to the large, positive short-run CAR at the time of the investment.
For the Norway SWF, we do not have the exact announcement dates of investments.
However, we do have information on equity returns for 1,761 firm investments of the Norwegian
fund. Based on this information, the equity portfolio return of the Norway SWF for the year 2007
was only 6.9% while the return on the world market index (as measured by the MSCI Global
Equity index) was 9.6%, consistent with the negative buy-and-hold returns of the other SWFs in
These results indicate that the long-run performance of equity investments by SWFs
tends to be poor, consistent with a poor risk-return tradeoff as a result of imperfect portfolio
diversification and poor corporate governance. It is often argued that SWFs thus far have been
passive investors that have not contributed to shareholder activism. Partly in response to political
pressure, SWFs have actually refused board seats they were offered at companies in which they
hold large stakes. For example, the China Investment Corporation refused a seat on the board
offered by Blackstone Group, which sold the fund a US$ 3 billion stake in 2007, and the
Government of Singapore Investment Corporation refused a board seat offered by UBS, being its
6. Conclusions
We collect new data on investments by SWFs to study the investment behavior and performance
of SWFs. Several insights emerge from our analysis. First, we find that SWFs largely invest to
diversify away from industries at home but that they bias their investments toward countries with
similar cultural origins (such as religious affinity), suggesting their investment rules are not
30
entirely driven by pure profit maximizing objectives. Second, share prices of firms respond
favorably when SWFs announce investments, in part because these investments often take place
in firms that are financially constrained. Third, the long-run performance of equity investments
by SWFs tends to be poor, consistent with imperfect portfolio diversification and potential
While politicians and economists alike have expressed concerns that SWFs may serve
political objectives and invest in strategic industries, our results offer a somewhat more benign
view of SWFs. Despite exhibiting cultural biases, we find that SWFs often invest in companies
that are financially constrained, possibly alleviating financing constraints that constrain firm
growth, thus enhancing the value of such firms. Recent SWF capital injections in distressed US
investment banks are a good example of such investments, though we find that such investments
are limited to the financial services industry. Finally, we find that there is heterogeneity among
SWFs with some SWFs (such as the Norwegian SWF) being quite transparent about their
investments holdings and strategies. Still, many SWFs are not transparent about their investment
strategies and their investments generate negative long-run returns, leaving much room for
improvement in transparency, governance, and shareholder activism on the part of these funds.
Also, our finding that their investments exhibit cultural biases raises questions about the
efficiency of their asset allocation. Given their sheer size and growing importance as global
equity investors, SWFs could potentially play an important role as large shareholders in
monitoring firms, but given their lack of transparency and potentially conflicting objectives they
are unlikely to achieve such a role at this stage. Therefore, we concur with the view that SWFs
should become more transparent about their investment holdings and strategies.
31
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35
Table 1
Overview of Sovereign Wealth Funds
This table reports summary statistics for the largest (in terms of assets) 22 sovereign wealth funds around the world. The data is
collected from the SWF Institute, Lexis-Nexis and other news stories as well as 10-K filings of individual firms. Proportion of assets
in equity (% public equity) is calculated based on the amounts of investments reported in news stories and other filings. For some
cases the actual dollar amount of investment is not given but the percentage of stake acquired is given. For publicly traded companies
the proportion of investment is calculated as proportion of market capitalization. Market capitalization is collected from Datastream
and Compustat. For investments for which we have dates we use the market capitalization as of that date. For investments for which
do not have the dates we use the market capitalization as of 2007.
Norway Government Pension Fund – Global $380 1990 Oil 6.06 34.95%
China (Hong Kong) Hong Kong Monetary Authority $163 1998 Non-Commodity
Investment Portfolio
Singapore Temasek Holdings $159 1974 Non-Commodity 0.98 26.60%
United States New Mexico State Investment Office $16 1958 Non-Commodity 0.06 12.98%
Trust
36
Table 2
Geographic Distribution of Equity Investments of Sovereign Wealth Funds
This table reports summary statistics for sovereign wealth funds around the world. The data is collected from the SWF Institute, Lexis-
Nexis and other news stories as well as 10-K filings of individual firms. The SWF institute collects its data from official filings.
Proportion of assets in equity is calculated based on the amounts of investments reported in news stories and other filings. For some
cases the actual dollar amount of investment is not given but the percentage of stake acquired is given. For publicly traded companies
the proportion of investment is calculated as proportion of market capitalization. Market capitalization is collected from Datastream
and Compustat. For investments for which we have dates we use the market capitalization as of that date. For investments for which
do not have the dates we use the market capitalization as of 2007.
Country Abu Govt Govt of Kuwait China Temasek Qatar Brunei Korea Khazanah New Mexico Dubai
Dhabi Pension Singapore Invt. Invt. Holdings Invt. Invt. Invt. Nasional State Invt. World
Invt. Fund- Invt. Authority Corp Authority Agency Corp Office Trust
Council Norway Corp
Australia 1.53% 3.90%
Austria 5.33% 0.37% 0.32% 6.67%
Belgium 0.76%
Bermuda 0.17% 0.12% 1.21%
Brazil 0.66% 5.24%
Canada 10.32% 2.03% 0.52% 19.13%
China 0.59% 0.66% 4.28%
Czech Republic 0.09%
Denmark 0.43%
Egypt 0.23% 0.02%
Finland 0.78%
France 7.47%
Germany 9.93% 6.15% 4.16%
Greece 0.48%
Hong Kong 1.14% 0.13% 1.12% 4.06% 0.11%
India 0.12% 0.63% 1.68% 0.04%
Indonesia 0.03% 16.77%
Ireland 0.27% 0.74%
Israel 0.04%
Italy 1.49% 2.57%
Japan 7.90% 0.70% 4.11%
Korea 0.38% 1.46% 5.19% 7.94% 48.11%
Luxembourg 0.10%
Malaysia 0.05% 51.05% 77.31%
Mexico 0.38%
New Zealand 0.05%
Netherlands 3.27% 2.60% 1.74%
Norway 38.50%
Pakistan 6.91%
Philippines 0.01%
Portugal 0.20%
Russia 0.05% 0.46%
Singapore 0.54% 67.13% 2.72% 3.54%
Sweden 1.86% 0.68% 2.32%
Switzerland 4.89% 54.40%
South Africa 0.58%
Spain 2.32%
Taiwan 0.45% 0.26% 0.27% 0.99%
Thailand 0.04% 100%
Turkey 0.08%
United Arab Emirates 11.50% 2.04%
United Kingdom 8.46% 19.18% 5.14% 34.97% 7.85% 41.96% 57.48%
United States 13.80% 27.76% 34.06% 93.86% 59.79% 11.49% 4.96% 92.08% 22.05% 19.56%
37
Table 3
Industrial Distribution of Equity Investments of Sovereign Wealth Funds
This table reports summary statistics for industrial distribution for sovereign wealth funds around the world. The data is collected from
the SWF Institute, Lexis-Nexis and other news stories as well as 10-K filings of individual firms. The SWF institute collects its data
from official filings. Proportion of assets in equity is calculated based on the amounts of investments reported in news stories and
other filings. For some cases the actual dollar amount of investment is not given but the percentage of stake acquired is given. For
publicly traded companies the proportion of investment is calculated as proportion of market capitalization Industrial classification
information is collected from Datastream and Compustat. For investments for which we have dates we use the market capitalization as
of that date. For investments for which do not have the dates we use the market capitalization as of 2007.
Country Abu Govt Govt of Kuwait China Temasek Qatar Brunei Korea Khazanah New Dubai
Dhabi Pension Singapore Invt. Invt. Holdings Invt. Invt. Invt. Nasional Mexico World
Invt. Fund- Invt. Authority Corp Authority Agency Corp State Invt.
Council Norway Corp Office
Trust
Basic materials 17.60% 3.60% 0.70% 7.90% 19.10% 29.30%
Financials 15.00% 25.50% 91.10% 93.40% 94.70% 45.00% 9.20% 92.10% 37.80% 52.10% 19.60%
Healthcare 0.20% 6.60% 0.20% 0.40% 6.80% 9.20% 7.70% 22.20%
Industrials 3.60% 9.70% 1.70% 6.10% 1.91%
Oil & Gas 60.30% 6.70% 0.10% 5.20% 23.50% 100% 45.40%
Technology 0.90% 6.80% 0.30% 4.50% 1.00% 21.10%
Telecom 1.40% 3.80% 1.60% 6.00% 2.80%
Utilities 52.60%
Unquoted equities 0.30% 1.20%
38
Table 4
Governance and Transparency of Sovereign Wealth Funds
The table reports governance and transparency scores for SWFs in our sample. The data is collected from the Peterson
Institute for International Economics report called “A Scoreboard for Sovereign Wealth Funds” (Truman, 2008). The
governance score is based on the role of the government in setting the investment strategy, role of the manager in executing
investment strategy, guidelines for corporate responsibility and whether the fund has an ethical guideline. The governance
score has a range between 0 and 4. Transparency and accountability is based on three broad categories. First is ‘reports’
which is in turn based on whether the fund publishes annual and quarterly reports. The second broad category is termed as
‘investments’ and includes information on whether the size of the fund, returns, types of investment, location, specific
investment instruments used, currency composition and mandates are publicly available information. The third broad
category is ‘audit’ which includes questions on whether the fund has a regular audit, whether the audit report is published and
whether the audit is conducted independently. The transparency score has a range from 0-12.
Governance +
Governance Transparency transparency
Govt Pension Fund- Norway 4 10.5 14.5
New Mexico State Investment Office Trust 2 8.5 10.5
Temasek Holdings 1.5 8 9.5
Kuwait Investment Authority 3 3 6
Khazanah Nasional 1.5 4 5.5
Korea Investment Corp 2 1 3
Brunei Investment Agency 0.5 1 1.5
Government of Singapore Investment Corp 0 0.75 0.75
China Investment Corp 0 0.5 0.5
Abu Dhabi Investment Council 0 0 0
Dubai World 0 0 0
Qatar Investment Authority 0 0 0
39
Table 5
Determinants of Foreign Bias of Sovereign Wealth Funds
The dependent variable is foreign bias, defined as the log ratio of the share of country j in fund holdings of country i to the world market capitalization weight of country j as of
end of 2007. In Column (2), foreign bias is measured with respect to the weight in the MSCI world index. In Column (3), foreign bias is measured using the average from US
mutual fund benchmark. This data is obtained from epfr.com. In Column (4), we exclude investments by the Norwegian SWF. In Column (5), foreign bias is measured with respect
to country asset allocation of the Norwegian SWF. Physical closeness is the inverse geographical distance (in kilometers) between the capitals of the source and destination country
of the SWF investment. It is inverse of distance measured in kilometers. Trade closeness is measured by the total exports and imports between source and destination country of
investment scaled by total trade of host country of the SWF as of 2000. Industrial closeness is based on industrial distance between source and destination country of investment
based on the United Nations industrial classification. Language closeness, religious closeness and ethnic closeness are cultural proximity variables that indicate similarity in culture
between the host and destination country. The variables are defined as the uncentered correlation between country pairs and are obtained from Acemoglu et al (2008). Log per
capita GDP is the logarithm of per capita GDP. Stock market development is stock market capitalization as a fraction of GDP. The third set of explanatory variables includes
corporate governance variables of the destination countries. Judicial efficiency is measure of the efficiency of the country’s judiciary. Risk of expropriation is a measure of the risk
of appropriation of investment by the destination country’s government. Accounting standards is a measure of the quality and range of information contained in firms’ financial
statements. All standard errors are heteroskedasticity consistent. ***, ** and * represent significance at the 1%, 5% and 10% respectively.
40
Mktcap excl. Home country Mktcap, Mktcap,
Mktcap Wt. MSCI Wt. US Mutual Fund Norway Norway Wt. fixed effects Gov>Median Gov<Median
(0.017) (0.016) (0.022 (0.047 (0.045) (0.012) (0.009) (0.047)
Log Per Capita GDP 0.883 0.760 0.934 0.037 -0.808 1.234 ** 1.425 *** -0.385
(0.751) (0.715) (0.857 (2.215 (1.677) (0.508) (0.303) (2.330)
41
Table 6
Determinants Foreign Bias of the Norway Pension Fund: 1998-2007
The dependent variable is foreign bias, defined as the log ratio of the share of country j in fund holdings of the Norway SWF (j not
equal to Norway) to the world market capitalization weight of country j at the end of year t, with t ranging from 1998 to 2007. Column
(2) includes time fixed effects. Physical closeness is the inverse geographical distance (in kilometers) between the capitals of the
source and destination country of the SWF investment. It is inverse of distance measured in kilometers. Trade closeness is measured
by the total exports and imports between source and destination country of investment scaled by total trade of host country of the SWF
as of 2000. Industrial closeness is based on industrial distance between source and destination country of investment based on the
United Nations industrial classification. Language closeness, religious closeness and ethnic closeness are cultural proximity variables
that indicate similarity in culture between the host and destination country. The variables are defined as the uncentered correlation
between country pairs and are obtained from Acemoglu et al (2008). Log per capita GDP is the logarithm of per capita GDP. Stock
market development is stock market capitalization as a fraction of GDP. The third set of explanatory variables includes corporate
governance variables of the destination countries. Judicial efficiency is measure of the efficiency of the country’s judiciary. Risk of
expropriation is a measure of the risk of appropriation of investment by the destination country’s government. Accounting standards is
a measure of the quality and range of information contained in firms’ financial statements. All standard errors are heteroskedasticity
consistent. ***, ** and * represent significance at the 1%, 5% and 10% respectively.
Mktcap Wt.,
Mktcap Wt. with time fixed effects
(1) (2)
Physical Closeness 2.064 *** 1.886 ***
(0.417) (0.383)
Trade Closeness 2.205 2.841
(6.807) (6.116)
Industrial Closeness -5.231 *** -5.203 ***
(1.481) (1.078)
Religious Closeness 0.365 0.614
(0.657) (0.579)
Stock Market Development 0.232 -0.164
(0.469) (0.453)
Judicial Efficiency 0.001 -0.078
(0.220) (0.199)
Risk of Expropriation 1.438 *** 1.470 ***
(0.327) (0.375)
Accounting Standards -0.029 -0.022
(0.023) (0.020)
Log Per Capita GDP -0.211 ** -0.167 *
(0.102) (0.095)
42
Table 7
Announcement Effects of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments
The table reports the event study results. Our sample consists of 89 firms for which we have the exact announcement date for the
investment made by the SWF. Results exclude all investments of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global for which the
exact date of investment is not available. The event study methodology is similar to Karpoff and Malatesta (1989). For each event we
estimate a market model ( specific to the origin of each fund) from 281 to 80 trading days prior to the event date. The parameters are
estimated from a simple market model framework (Rit=α +βRmt + εit). Abnormal returns are calculated as the difference between
actual and predicted returns based on the market model. We sum over abnormal returns to calculate cumulative abnormal returns. .
***, ** and * represent significance at the 1%, 5% and 10% respectively.
43
Table 8
Multivariate Analysis of Announcement Effects of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments
The table reports multivariate analysis on the event study. Dependent variable is the cumulative abnormal return of the SWF
investment based on a [-20, 10] window. The event study methodology is similar to Karpoff and Malatesta (1989). For each event we
estimate a market model (specific to the origin of each fund) from 281 to 80 trading days prior to the event date. The parameters are
estimated from a simple market model framework (Rit=α +βRmt + εit). Abnormal returns are calculated as the difference between
actual and predicted returns based on the market model. We sum over abnormal returns to calculate cumulative abnormal returns.
Language closeness, religious closeness and ethnic closeness are cultural proximity variables that indicate similarity in culture
between the host and destination country. The variables are defined as the uncentered correlation between country pairs and are
obtained from Acemoglu et al (2008). Log per capita GDP is the logarithm of per capita GDP. Cash Constrained is a dummy variable
that takes a value of 1 if the KZ measure of capital constraints takes on a score above the sample median, and zero otherwise.
Ownership Stake is a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 if the SWF stake is larger than 1% of the firm’s total equity capital, and
zero otherwise. High Governance is a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 if the governance score of the SWF is above the median
and 0 otherwise. Subprime is a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 if there was a monetary injection in a financial firm that
suffered subprime mortgage assets related losses, and zero otherwise. Our sample consists of 89 firms for which we have the exact
announcement date for the investment made by the SWF. Results exclude all investments of the Norwegian Government Pension
Fund – Global for which the exact date of investment is not available. Industry fixed effects according to Datastream’s industry
classification are included in all regressions. ***, ** and * represent significance at the 1%, 5% and 10% respectively.
N 50 50 50 50 50
R2 0.24 0.36 0.36 0.41 0.41
44
Table 9
Characteristics of Sovereign Wealth Fund Equity Investments: Matched Sample Analysis
The table reports summary statistics for the matched sample analysis for firms in the event study. Our sample consists of 76 firms. We
start with the sample of 89 firms for which we have the exact announcement date for the investment made by the SWF and need to
drop 13 firms for which we do not have accounting data required to perform the matched sample analysis. For each of these firms we
find matches based on country size (as measured by sales) and industry (Datastream industry classification and 1 digit SIC code) and
year. For investments made in 2008 matches were based on 2007 observations. All accounting data was obtained from Compustat and
Datastream and Worldscope. Each of the firms were then matched by the average (median) of all potential matches. KZQ and KZ are
measures of capital constraints, defined as: KZQ=-1.002*(Cash flow/Lagassets) - 39.368*(Dividends/Lagassets) - 1.315*(Cash
balances/Lagassets) + 3.139*Leverage + 0.283*Tobin’s Q, and KZ=-1.002*(Cash flow/Lagassets) - 39.368*(Dividends/Lagassets) -
1.315*(Cash balances/Lagassets) + 3.139*Leverage. All components of the capital constraints measures were winsorized at the 1%
and 99% level. ***, ** and * represent significance at the 1%, 5% and 10% respectively.
45
Table 10
Long Run Returns of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments
The table reports long run abnormal returns of SWF investments. The buy and hold returns are calculated over 1 year, 3 year and 5
year returns, starting from the investment date [t=0]. The returns are abnormal returns over the market returns, starting on the
investment date. * represents significance at the 10% level.
46
Appendix 1
Bank Capital Injections by Sovereign Wealth Funds
This table reports summary statistics for sovereign wealth funds which made subprime infusions into the major global banks during
2007-2008. The information is collected from Bloomberg and the SWF Institute.
47
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Appendix 2
Summary Statistics for Independent Variables in Bilateral Regressions for Foreign Bias of Sovereign Wealth Funds
The foreign bias is defined as the log ratio of the share of country j in fund holdings of country i (with i not equal to j) to the world market capitalization weight of country j and
alternatively to the weight of country j in MSCI world index as of end of 2007. Physical closeness is the inverse geographical distance (in kilometers) between the capitals of the
source and destination country of the SWF investment. It is inverse of distance measured in kilometers. Trade closeness is measured by the total exports and imports between
source and destination country of investment scaled by total trade of host country of the SWF as of 2000. Industrial closeness is based on industrial distance between source and
destination country of investment based on the United Nations industrial classification. Language closeness, religious closeness and ethnic closeness are cultural proximity
variables that indicate similarity in culture between the host and destination country. The variables are defined as the uncentered correlation between country pairs and are obtained
from Acemoglu et al (2008). Per capita GDP is the logarithm of per capita GDP. Stock market development is stock market capitalization as a fraction of GDP. The third set of
explanatory variables includes corporate governance variables of the destination countries. Judicial efficiency is measure of the efficiency of the country’s judiciary. Risk of
expropriation is a measure of the risk of appropriation of investment by the destination country’s government. Accounting standards is a measure of the quality and range of
information contained in firms’ financial statements.
Mean 0.470 0.559 0.384 0.047 0.741 0.009 0.029 0.284 10.175 1.020 8.743 9.164 67.104
Std Deviation 1.535 1.458 0.571 0.063 0.248 0.067 0.140 0.355 0.572 0.494 1.844 1.053 10.577
Maximum 4.777 5.468 3.067 0.245 0.986 0.548 0.929 1.000 10.769 2.095 10.000 9.980 83.000
Minimum -2.417 -1.633 0.059 0.000 0.217 0.000 0.000 0.001 7.992 0.200 3.250 5.220 24.000
Number of observations 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67
48