We investigate the effect of government share ownership on the cost of corporate debt. Government ownership could carry an implicit debt guarantee reducing the chance of default and leading to a lower cost of debt. On the other hand, government ownership could lead to a higher cost of debt if...

We examine 802 investments by 33 Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in publicly traded companies between May 1985 and November 2009, and find that SWFs tend to invest in large, levered, profitable growth firms, usually headquartered in an OECD country. Announcements of SWF investments yield...

Co-lending by private-sector and government-owned lenders accounts for over one-tenth of all syndicated-loan funding to corporate borrowers from 1980 to 2010. Co-lending is often rationalized as a mean to impose market discipline on government-owned lenders. We investigate whether that is really...

Governments around the world are attempting to support individuals' incomes, rescue distressed businesses, and preserve employer-employee relationships damaged in the coronavirus pandemic by adopting fiscal stimulus programs of unprecedented scale. Although the bulk of this spending will involve...

Commodity (primarily oil) funds are facing today the most severe adverse shock of their history. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the crisis in oil-rich nations, already hit by low oil prices and declining hydrocarbon revenues. Governments of all stripes are tapping sovereign wealth and...

We study the impact of government expropriation risk on the terms of cross-border syndicated loans. By comparing loans by foreign lenders from countries covered by bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to loans from non-covered countries, we isolate and quantify the impact of strengthening...

This paper addresses the difficulties of accurately defining a SWF, discusses the evolution of the original SWFs from stabilization to wealth funds, and examines how SWFs are organized and funded. We also detail the key measures developed to assess the operational and informational transparency...

Using a sample of 1,018 Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) equity investments in publicly traded firms and a control sample of 5,975 transactions by private-sector financial institutions over 1980-2012, we find that announcement-period abnormal returns of SWF investments are positive, but lower than...

Extant research finds that announcement-period abnormal returns of sovereign wealth fund (SWF) equity investments in publicly traded firms are positive but lower than those of comparable private investments. We investigate the determinants of this “SWF discount” and mitigating mechanisms. We...

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) represent a new form of investment organizational structure and have grown to over $5.7 trillion assets under management by February 2016, making them a financial force potentially worth reckoning with in international financial markets. This article starts with a...