My ambition,” says Zafer Sönmez, “is to place Turkey Wealth Fund as one of the leading sovereign wealth funds in the CEEMEA [central and eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa] region. In terms of governance, in terms of deal making, in terms of human talent, we want a place in the top quartile of sovereign wealth funds.”
These are big calls for a fund that faces a lot of challenges. When Sönmez became chief executive in 2018, he took on a new institution – it was legally formed in 2016 but was only given control of most of its underlying assets the following year – that lacked many of the advantages of other sovereign wealth funds around the world.
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