This content is from: Corner Office
Weekend Giant Reading, January 17–19, 2014
Here’s what’s been going on this week down on the Ave of Giants.

Welcome to the weekend! Heres whats been going on this week down on the Ave of Giants.
First, the news;- New SWFs I: Israels Knesset Science and Tech Committee has approved the creation of a new SWF for looming gas revenues.
- New SWFs II: Zimbabwe's new SWF continues to take shape; a new bill proposes levies on mining companies to fund the new vehicle. - LP To GP: OMERS Ventures may take 3rd party capital into its next fund. - Collaboration: Ireland's new SDF has apparently teamed up with the China Investment Corp to fund... to the tune of 70M... new tech firms. - Geography: What's the CPPIB doing in Hong Kong? This. - Deal Flow I: The Korea Investment Corp is thinking about selling its $1B stake in Bank of America. - Deal Flow II: Sub-national SWF, 1Malaysia Development Bhd, is looking for advisors on its $2B power assets IPO. - Consolidation: In 1995, there were 5,001 regulated super funds in Oz. in 2013 there were 325. This is good. - Whole Finance: How the processed food industry behaves similarly to certain financial services firms. - Cleanliness: Ceres asks pension funds to invest in clean energy. I say... we're trying. - SDFs: The Oman Investment Fund just invested HK$387.5 million in Li Ka-shing's Power Assets Holdings.- Pruning: CalPERS will cut 260 PE managers and end up... still having way too many PE managers. - Frontier Finance: When investing from Papua New Guinea... "Absolutely none of the typical rules apply." - Real Estate: AusSuper is going directly into London real estate.Second, heres some research:
- Sovereign Development Funds I: Alan Gelb, Silvana Tordo, and Håvard Halland have a new paper entitled, "Sovereign Wealth Funds and Domestic Investment in Resource-Rich Countries: Love Me, or Love Me Not?"- Sovereign Development Funds II: Douglas J. Cumming has published a new paper entitled, "Public Economics Gone Wild: Lessons from Venture Capital."
Both papers are interesting and offer different perspectives on the role of the government in catalyzing local industries.
Anyway, have a great weekend!