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.
Turkey doesn’t have bounteous hydrocarbon income to seed a fund, or surplus foreign exchange reserves. In many months it runs twin deficits, current account and budget, so there is not a lot of spare cash there either.
Covid has made things worse, putting huge pressure on government finances, the currency and the performance of the Turkish economy.
I noticed something is missing in my territory, Turkey, versus Asia.
