The Evolving Landscape of Sovereign Wealth Funds in a Changing World Economy: How Resilient Are the Santiago Principles?

Abstract

The emergence of sovereign wealth funds in the early 2000s as a growing pool of large, globally focused state-owned investors quickly became a concern for politicians in the United States and in Europe who were fearful of possible financial and economic malfeasance by these institutions. Underlying these concerns were normative foundations that presumed liberal global capital markets to be the reserve primarily of private actors. The presence of state actors also raised questions about possible market distortion if capital allocation decisions are made on non-commercial (political) grounds. Such concerns led to the creation of 24 Generally Accepted Principles and Practices for sovereign wealth funds, commonly referred to as the Santiago Principles, as a means of increasing the transparency of sovereign wealth funds and ultimately legitimizing their presence in global capital markets. Since then, the transparency of sovereign wealth funds in aggregate has increased, and much of the fervent concerns about sovereign wealth funds as ‘barbarians at the gate’ have subsided. However, this does not mean that concerns from investment-receiving countries have disappeared. Sovereign wealth funds are still state capital, and scrutiny thereof in general has increased. At the same time, the number of sovereign wealth funds has increased, as have the number of funds focused on strategic investments. This article discusses the changing landscape of sovereign wealth funds and the challenges this poses for the Santiago Principles as the global governance regime for sovereign wealth funds.