The Sovereign Wealth Fund Discount: Evidence from Public Equity Investments

November 28, 2013 Leave a comment

The Sovereign Wealth Fund Discount: Evidence from Public Equity Investments

Bernardo Bortolotti Università di Torino

Veljko Fotak SUNY Buffalo; Bocconi University – BAFFI Center on International Markets, Money, and Regulation

William L. Megginson University of Oklahoma

September 17, 2013
Baffi Center Research Paper No. 2013-140
FEEM Working Paper No. 22.2009

Abstract: 
Using a sample of 1,018 Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) equity investments in publicly traded firms and a control sample of 5,975 transactions by private-sector financial institutions over 1980-2012, we find that announcement-period abnormal returns of SWF investments are positive, but lower than those of comparable private-sector investments by approximately 2.67 percentage points. We do not find evidence of long-term stock price performance of SWF investment targets differing from that of private-sector investment targets. We do find, however, significant differences among SWFs which are only partially captured by the short-term market reaction: firms acquired by passive funds tend to underperform over the following three years, while positive abnormal returns are associated with actively monitoring SWFs. We conclude that SWFs’ corporate governance role tends to affect the value of the firm.

Filed under Research

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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