States require money to function and therefore every government has to continuously raise new funds. On the financial markets, governments cannot be sure that auctions of their debt will be sufficiently attractive to financial investors, which is why governments usually enter into cooperative...

This article investigates the factors that motivated sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in their massive investment operations in European or US company equity, especially banking institutions. Considered to be investors with considerable financial clout, albeit passive and long-term, SWFs have long...