Monthly Archives: October 2010

SWF Update

Sovereign wealth funds are developing more in-house portfolio management teams after the global crisis according to Cerulli Associates. We confirm that this is a trend we have been seeing for some time. While most of the $3 trillion estimated to be managed by SWFs assets continues to be outsourced or passively managed in index replication funds and ETFs, many of the biggest funds have set up in-house Alpha teams with very aggressive return objectives such as doubling their money in three years. This resembles a bar-bell investment approach on a large scale, marrying very cautious outsourcing and passive investing with in-house risk taking in the form of highly concentrated portfolios. The performance of many SWFs was hit particularly hard by the crisis so it is not surprising to see a change in investment approach.