Weekend Giant Reading, January 24 – 26, 2014

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

First, the news:

• New SWFs I: Canadian provinces are setting up SWFs ... and learning from some of Alberta's mistakes.
• New SWFs II: Nigeria's new SWF may get an extra $4 billion in the "medium term," though I'm sure the State Governors will have an opinion on that.
• New SWFs III: Most resource-based SWFs exist, in part, to diversify the sovereign asset base. In Zimbabwe, it'll be for doubling down?
• New SWFs IV: Tanzania's plans to set up a new SWF in 2014 are apparently on track.  
• Diversification: Bahrain's Mumtalakat may finally get to diversify its holdings... Better late than never!
• Infrastructure: The Kuwait Investment Authority will focus greater attention on infrastructure in British, U.S. and European markets.
• Professionals I: Jagdeep Bachher, long time friend of the show, is taking over at Regents.
• Professionals II: CIC's CIO Li Keping will replace Gao Xiqing as the fund's vice chairman and president.
• Professionals III: CalPERS is grooming its next generation of leadership.
• China: And the biggest foreign investor in China's renminbi public market is ... The Kuwait Investment Authority with $2.5 billion.
• Fee Machine: Libyan Investment Authority says, "Goldman Sachs abused the relationship of trust and confidence ..." and has thus filed suit.
• Insourcing: Direct PE investors added 3.5 percent above benchmarks over 16 years. Over that same time period, outsourcing to managers added 0.2 percent. And fund of funds investments? Well those lost 1.6 percent compared to benchmarks.  
• Geography: Temasek is setting up an office in Tokyo.
• Cool: Women-led hedge funds have outperformed the broader industry by more than 700 basis points since 2007.
• Restructuring: Here’s an interesting take on the future of Norway's SWF from Reuters; changes are coming.
• SDFs I: Interesting changes afoot for the Russia Direct Investment Fund; it will apparently need to raise more foreign capital to do deals.
• SDFs II: Malaysia's Khazanah ... a fund that has non-financial objectives ... just crushed it, financially.
• SDFs III: Ireland's National Pension Reserve Fund continues to sell off its portfolio to raise cash for Government’s stimulus.

Second, here are some papers:

• Long-Term: Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman have a new paper entitled, “Focusing Capital on the Long Term.” It’s worth reading.
• Geography: Why SWFs are trying hard to get closer to the action ... and how? Read this paper I recently finished with Qais A Al-Kharusi and Adam D. Dixon entitled, “Getting Closer to the Action: Why Pension and Sovereign Funds are Expanding Geographically.”

Have a great weekend!