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...

The emergence of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) and some spectacular investments of these funds in recent years have caused widespread attention on international financial markets. Most SWFs are domiciled in Arabian countries, East Asia and Russia. Their low transparency led to concerns that SWFs...

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...

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...

Direct investments are the preferred vehicle for large institutional investors to have control over their portfolio investments. We study the deal structure of direct investments by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in private equity transactions. We find that SWFs shift from investing in private...

Direct investments are the preferred vehicle for large institutional investors to have control over their portfolio investments. We study the deal structure of direct investments by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in private equity transactions. We find that SWFs shift from investing in private...

The aim of this paper is to identify the driving forces of Sovereign wealth funds' investments. For this, we develop an original econometric framework that quantifies the role of spatial dependence in the location of investments, and uses the Inverse Hyperbolic Sine transformation of the...

We survey the literature documenting the rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), which, with assets under management of over $4.5 trillion in early 2014, are a major force in global finance. Research papers have analyzed the evolution of the initial SWFs from stabilization funds to stand-alone...

We analyze definitions used by researchers about a single concept: Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF). It is still a matter of recent controversy and debate. We place these definitions into one of eleven categories. The results show full agreement (what we have called ‘the core') for just two...

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...