Weekend Reading

Here’s today’s top stories:

- Mubadala's 630MW offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary fires up for the first time.

- OTPP likes "private label salty snacks" enough to buy a firm that makes 'em.  Mmmmmm... Salty snacks.

- The Fiji National Pension Fund wins an award... And then gets slammed in the press for it.

- Namibia's GIPF has learned an expensive lesson on how (not) to structure private equity fee schedules.

- Norway's sovereign fund awards a $300 million mandate to a mid- and small-cap Korean manager.

And here’s something to read over the weekend:

- I thought this new paper on “Crowdfunding” was pretty interesting. Here’s some blurbage: “This paper aims to take stock of the extant knowledge on an emerging practice in the entrepreneurial finance landscape: crowdfunding, which seems to play an increasing important role for the seed financing of entrepreneurial projects.” 

- And this paper on the growth of modern finance is pretty remarkable. Here’s a blurb:

“The U.S. financial services industry grew from 4.9% of GDP in 1980 to 7.9% of GDP in 2007. A sizeable portion of the growth can be explained by rising asset management fees, which in turn were driven by increases in the valuation of tradable assets, particularly equity. Another important factor was growth in fees associated with an expansion in household credit, particularly fees associated with residential mortgages. This expansion was itself fueled by the development of non-bank credit intermediation (or “shadow banking”). We offer a preliminary assessment of whether the growth of active asset management, household credit, and shadow banking – the main areas of growth in the financial sector – has been socially beneficial.”

Have a nice weekend!