The Kuwaiti Sovereign Fund, which represents public reserve funds for future generations, and which came at the initiative of the late Amir Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem, seventy years ago, is considered one of the oldest sovereign wealth funds in the world, and with time it has become the most secretive and mysterious. The fund’s money is managed from Kuwait, and from the office of the Kuwait Investment Authority in London. The fund’s activity includes the local market and international markets, and it was ranked globally, in 2022, third, with assets said to be approximately $800 billion. The primacy of the Kuwait Fund prompted Norway, at the beginning of the nineties, to visit the KIA office in London, during the presidency of the well-known economist Youssef AlAwadi, to benefit from Kuwait’s expertise in this field.
Although morethan 70 years have passed since the establishment of the FutureGenerations Fund, the number of those who know its balance, how it works, its areas of investment, the mechanism that is followed to select members of its board of directors, and the extent of the efficiency of the administrative apparatus arevery limited, due to the natureof confidentiality in it. The Norwegian Sovereign Fund, which was established in the 1990s, is considered the best among the world’s funds, and it is characterized by a high degree of transparency. Its goal is to invest the entirestate’s oil revenues in generating assets and not to dispose of them. Rather, it is reserved to face the effects of the next decline in income, when oil loses its importance.
The Norwegian Fund succeeded, within a relatively short period, to become not the largest, but rather the most profitable, credible, professional and transparent that any other investment fund lacks, especially the Kuwait Fund. In the first half of this year, it achieved the highest percentage of profits in its history, and the best compared to others, with the support of its investments in American technology companies and artificial intelligence companies, as its profits amounted to $ 143 billion, or approximately 14%, in the first half of this year, and this amounts to double what it achieved in the first half of last year. The Fund’s CEO, Nikolai Tangin, said: The strong return was a surprise to him, due to the amount of economic and political risks, which arevery worrying, in global markets, with high inflation rates and increasing geopolitical tensions. The Norwegian fund is also the largest single investor in the stock market worldwide.
From its website https://www. nbim.no/ you can find out the following: It owns stocks, bonds, and real estate all over the world, and does not invest in Norway, to avoid causing any inflation. He also owns a small stake in morethan 9,000 companies around the world, including Apple, Nestlé, Microsoft, and Samsung. On average, the Fund owns 1.5% of all listed companies in the world. Its investments arespread across most markets, countries and currencies to achieve maximum security by diversifying risks well. As for fixed income investments, which amount to 30% of the Fund’s balance, it is allocated to purchase bonds issued by governments and institutions, with specific benefits.
The Fund also invests in high-quality real estate in major cities and global distribution networks, in renewable energy infrastructure, and in wind and solar energy projects. Many other important information can be known about the Fund, which has a balance of approximately $1.5 trillion, or twice what is known about the balance of the Kuwaiti fund! The insistence of the Kuwait Fund officials on complete secrecy in its work leads many to doubt the reasons. The balance of the fund belongs to the people, and it is the first to know the money in it, the method of disposing of that money, and the methods of monitoring it!
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By Ahmad alsarraf
