More on sovereign wealth funds
While Japan’s promise to hire ‘only the best and brightest’ should it get its sovereign wealth fund off the ground will attract the interest of fund managers looking for a challenge, a new report suggests that yet more opportunities to work in the high-profile SWF sector might be forthcoming. The report, from Shanghai-based firm Z-Ben advisers, projects that "More than $320 billion in new assets will be assigned to foreign third-party mandate managers by China’s sovereign wealth funds – China Investment Corporation (CIC), National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF) and China-Africa Development Fund (CAD Fund) by the end of 2010." The report notes that this would make Chinese SWFs the third-largest employers of external managers, behind only the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia) and the Japanese national pension fund. It also predicts a rise in the Chinese SWFs’ exposure to foreign securities: up from 14% to 49% by the end of 2010, we are told. If Japan’s fund gets off the ground by March 2009, as senator Kotaro Tamura confidently predicts, we could see capital flowing east to west as fast as résumés from fund managers are flying in the other direction.
