There’s news out this morning that Slovenia will be joining the SWF club, merging a variety of public agencies into a single ‘sovereign fund’ with a view to professionalizing asset management and boosting returns. Here’s Finance Minister Janez Sustersic with an explanation:
“The aim is to streamline the management of state assets and make them more efficient...We will later decide which are just portfolio investments, which are strategic and we want to keep and which companies will be sold.”
The new fund will combine five existing government agencies with roughly $13 billion in assets under management. The profits from the new vehicle will help finance unfunded pension liabilities and plug gaps in the budget.
It sounds to me like Slovenia will be setting up a sort of ‘Development Fund’ akin to Samruk-Kazyna or Khazanah or even an early Temasek. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
