Bangkok Post- It hasn’t been very long since acronyms such as ARM, Alt-A, MBS, CDO, or CDS began appearing in the financial news. Now it is the turn of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). These funds, which are mostly owned by high-saving countries in the Middle East and Asia, have somehow managed to emerge distinctly during the current sub-prime mortgage crisis.
SWFs are widely talked about mainly because of their size and their large rescue operations of the big banks suffering from sub-prime-related losses.
Examples include Merrill Lynch selling a stake to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), and the Singapore Government Investment Corporation (GIC) acquiring stake in the Swiss bank UBS.
