Sovereign giants PIF, ADIA, KIA thrive in trillion-dollar club with surging AUMs
The sovereign wealth fund tracker ranks Norway's Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) in first place with $1.76 trillion in AUM, followed by two China wealth funds, SAFE Investment Company (IC) with $1.41 trillion, and the China Investment Corporation (CIC) with $1.33 trillion.
The state-backed PIF has an estimated $1.15 trillion in AUM, despite reporting a 60% slump in net profit last month on the back of high interest rates and spiralling costs on several giga projects that have either been scaled down or delayed. PIF's total AUM rose 18% from 3.664 trillion riyals ($977 billion) a year earlier, with 37% of its portfolio invested in alternative assets, including real estate, infrastructure, private equity and hedge funds, Global SWF data revealed.
With a portfolio of investments that include giga-projects NEOM and the Red Sea coastal development, along with multi-billion investments companies such as Softbank, Saudi Aramco and Saudi National Bank, the fund is on track to become the world's largest SWF with AUM of $2 trillion by 2030, according to Global SWF.
The UAE sovereign investor ADIA is a close second to PIF, with $1.11 trillion in AUM, while ranking in fifth place in global rankings in July, and just below the Saudi wealth fund.
'Due to its size and significant allocation to private markets, ADIA is one of the world's largest investors in real estate, infrastructure and private equity,' Global SWF noted, with 32% of the wealth fund's portfolio invested in alternative assets.
In its review published in November, ADIA highlighted an investment strategy the fund has adopted in recent years is 'to emphasise total returns at a portfolio level, in contrast to the more traditional approach of tasking individual asset classes to outperform benchmarks.'
Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, KIA, with $1.002 billion in AUM, is ranked sixth by Global SWF. KIA has 23% of its portfolio invested in alternative assets with stakes in companies such as BlackRock and Germany's Mercedes-Benz Group.
(Writing by Bindu Rai, editing by Seban Scaria)
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