FEEM-Monitor SWF Report Q1-2009
31.07.2009
During the fi rst quarter of 2009, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) made 26 investments with a total value of $6.8 billion: the lowest expenditure of any quarter since the last of 2005. This is unsurprising given the current economic and fi nancial climate. Coupled with slowing income from plummeting oil prices and contracting global trade in 2008, the volatile investment climate has made SWFs more risk averse. Therefore, during Q1 2009 they continued to be cautious actors in the global economy, scaling back their acquisitions to refl ect their perception of increased market risk. This was exacerbated by SWFs suffering mark-to-market losses of an estimated $67 billion on their investments in publicly-listed companies by the end of Q1 2009,1 and some SWFs—notably the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA)— being required to bail out their countries’ faltering fi nancial service sectors. FEEM and Monitor publish the Q1-2009 SWF Report, analyzing Sovereign Wealth Funds transactions during the Q1 2009.