The Future of Long-Term Institutional Investment

Abstract

The concluding chapter emphasizes the need for institutional investors to rely on their own network economies as well as the agglomeration economies that they have access to through financial intermediaries. Social capital managers can be instrumental in helping institutional investors take advantage of these networks. Responding to the current trend toward peer collaboration and dis-intermediation, the chapter emphasizes the need for existing intermediaries to change their business models to keep pace. The number of new intermediaries that can help facilitate the flow of capital more efficiently into long-term assets are predicted to increase. The chapter highlights the importance of the government's role and the value of teaming up with true long-term partners for the sake of long-term assets like infrastructure,. This is the essence of the collaborative model, which helps investors achieve their own commercial objectives as well as broader economic objectives for society.

Who do sovereign wealth funds say they are? Using structural topic modeling to delineate variegated capitalism in their official reports

“…The international professional associations we posited could lead to a new identity do not prevail over these more traditional influences, but they seem to open the door to the emergence of investment strategies that are more innovative and active than traditional market investments. This indicates that through international clubs, SWFs could learn about new investment tools and methods, learn from each other’s investment experience and slowly develop models of investment (Monk et al., 2017), without changing their missions and values, which would still be dictated by each national government.…”

“…These “clubs” gather institutional investors with diverse missions, from authoritarian and democratic regimes around the world and could therefore be a vehicle for SWFs to expand the boundaries of their organizational category. So far, they seem to have helped SWFs and PPFs to take part in joint co-investment platforms such as OMERS- sponsored Global Strategic Investment Alliance, and TIAA-CREF-sponsored Agriculture LLC (with Swedish SWF AP fund, Canadian PPFs CDPQ and BCIMC) (Monk et al., 2017).…”

“…The two most complete lists we found were that of PwC’s “Sovereign Investors” (2016) and of the Sovereign Wealth Center. We completed these lists with members of four international organizations gathering many SWFs (Monk et al., 2017) because we were interested in the influence of professional groups on SWFs. We also added a list of sovereign development funds identified by Clark and Monk (2015) to make sure this variation of SWFs was included.…”

“…Indeed, SWFs have been increasingly co-investing together and with other institutional investors, as well as creating and joining international professional organizations (Bachher and Monk, 2013). If the first one, the International Forum of SWFs, was strongly influenced by an existing neoliberal international organization, the IMF, recent ones (such as the Long-Term Investors Club) were created and ran by SWFs themselves and invited other investors, most notably public pension funds (PPFs), around the ideal of long-term investing (Monk et al., 2017). These platforms and growing engagements with each other lead us to think that groups of SWFs sharing similar views on their missions and how they should invest are emerging.…”

The UK Infrastructure Bank and the financialization of public infrastructures amidst nationalist neoliberalism

“…The UKIB’s fund investments raise concern over the accountability, transparency and ultimate public benefits generated, since these investment vehicles have been criticized for short-term investment horizons, high fees and misalignment with investors’ long-term objectives (Monk et al, 2018: 18). Where funds have disclosed their investments, such as the NPUK ESG fund, funds are used to target assets with PPAs that channel renewable energy supplies to large corporates through exclusive contracts.…”