<article>New sovereign wealth fund dealmaking in China slid, while oil fell off the funds&#8217; investment radar completely last year, according to a survey released on Thursday.</article>

New sovereign wealth fund dealmaking in China slid, while oil fell off the funds&#8217; investment radar completely last year, according to a survey released on Thursday.
This was the first time since the report launched in 2012 that the sovereign wealth funds it tracks, whose assets under management grew to $11.6 trillion, made no new oil investments.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a very remarkable milestone,&#8221; said study author Javier Capape, director of sovereign wealth research with the Center of the Governance of Change at Spain-based IE University.
Instead, the funds are pivoting to investments in renewables, including wind, solar, energy storage and sustainable agriculture.
The report analysed direct investments by 100 sovereign wealth funds between January 2022 and March 2023. It tracked a total of 425 deals with a combined value of just over $118 billion.
It also found geographic shifts, with China falling out of the top three countries for share of deals &#8211; now trailing the United States, Britain and India. Its share slipped to 6.1% of the total, down from 10.5% in the prior year.
&#8220;This year to see China coming after the U.S. and India is very significant,&#8221; Capape said. He said unpredictable policies &#8212; the report covered the period to just after the government reopened the country following years of COVID-19 restrictions &#8212; had curtailed deals.
&#8220;We are still cautious about whether this will be structural – more related to geopolitical concerns – or more of a one off.&#8221;
International investors more broadly have been cautious on China and reducing their exposure in recent months to the world&#8217;s second largest economy, which has been struggling to keep economic momentum going after emerging from its lengthy COVID shutdowns, grappled with lacklustre growth and faced property sector turmoil.
The funds covered in the report range from Norway&#8217;s behemoth Government Pension Fund Global, with $1.4 trillion in assets, to Guyana&#8217;s newly established Natural Resource Fund, which nearly tripled last year to $1.2 billion as the South American nation began pumping oil.
However the top six most active funds—Singapore&#8217;s Temasek and GIC, Dubai&#8217;s Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority, and Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Public Investment Fund—were involved in more than 80% of the deals.
Only 39 of the 70 largest funds publish annual reports, making the report a rare source of information about their activities.
More broadly, Capape said deals shifted from a dominant focus on tech to a more even distribution across tech, industrials, real estate, financial, and healthcare.
Reuters

Temasek, GIC, Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority, and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund were the most active.

China was down and oil fell out of sovereign wealth funds' radar in 2022: survey

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China was down and oil fell out of sovereign wealth funds' radar in 2022: survey

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