Weekend Giant Reading, January 17–19, 2014

Welcome to the weekend! Here’s what’s been going on this week down on the Ave of Giants.

First, the news;

- New SWFs I: Israel’s 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, here’s 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!