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By Salar Ghahramani
Over the weekend, OPEC+ unexpectedly decided to reduce oil output, causing an initial 8%+ spike in US crude prices. This unforeseen decision, contrasting with market expectations of a production boost, carries substantial implications for the worldwide oil prices, the energy markets, and the overall global macroeconomic picture, given the decision’s potential impact on inflation and interest rates. This article consider whether the sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) of the OPEC+ nations—including their external fund managers—should (or could) have been informed of the decision by their respective OPEC+ representatives in advance, even just as courtesy. After all, if SWFs are an integral part of a country's macroeconomic apparatus, wouldn't it make sense for the institutions within the apparatus to coordinate in order to achieve the best possible national economic outcome? Before addressing the question, a brief background: OPEC+ consists of OPEC members and other significant oil-producing countries, many of which have sovereign wealth funds. Notable OPEC+ members with SWFs include Saudi Arabia (Public Investment Fund), the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Mubadala Investment Company), and Russia (Russian National Wealth Fund). Other SWFs from OPEC+ states include the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), Oman's State General Reserve Fund (SGRF), Bahrain's Mumtalakat Holding Company, and others. (Norway, a major oil exporter that is not a part of OPEC+, possesses the largest SWF globally, known as the Government Pension Fund Global, or GPFG.) As written in previous works on SWFs, ascertaining a definitive description of a sovereign wealth fund proves elusive, as does the generalization of their objectives and investment methodologies. The funds' purposes may span various areas, including counterbalancing macroeconomic consequences of abrupt export revenue escalations, administrating pension assets or a distinct allocation of foreign exchange reserves, and enabling intergenerational wealth distribution. Additionally, SWFs display diverse investment strategies, allocating resources across a wide array of asset classes. Naturally, the funds hold a crucial position in macroeconomic governance and worldwide financial equilibrium. For them to be successful, close collaboration with other macroeconomic governmental entities may be a necessity, as the resources of SWFs and the yields they produce exert considerable influence on public fiscal affairs, monetary conditions, external accounts, and worldwide balance sheet interconnections. Accordingly, for the purposes of this article, it would have made sense for the OPEC+ ministers and/or representatives to inform the SWFs of their respective home countries that an oil production cut was imminent, in case the national SWFs would have benefited from such information and could have placed oil price-sensitive trades—or adjusted their portfolios in other manners—in order to maximize the SWF’s returns or to hedge against adverse market reactions in the global equity markets or elsewhere--assuming that there would have been enough time for the SWFs to make proper portfolio adjustments. (It is worth noting here that SWFs are mostly long-term investors, although, theoretically, and barring any legislative or internal restrictions, they could trade anything, anywhere, any time, and hold a position for any duration of time.) Against this backdrop, if there is sufficient amount of time for a SWF to make the necessary adjustments in order to preemptively trade on--and potentially benefit from--the "inside" news such as the one out of OPEC+, should the information-sharing be a cause for concern for other, non-SWF, market participants? Would the intra-governmental coordination constitute a form of market manipulation, or simply benignly-coordinated economic policy making? As I note in my forthcoming book chapter titled “Institutional Framework and Governance Structure of Sovereign Wealth Funds,” SWFs have a wide range of governance mechanisms that may, or may not, allow for trading on such inside information. For some SWFs, information-sharing and actionable policy coordination with other national economic institutions may not even be viable due to the structural frameworks within which a number of SWFs operate. Ultimately, while there may be potential benefits to informing SWFs of major decisions like the OPEC+ output reduction, it is essential to weigh these benefits against the potential risks to market integrity and the SWFs' own governance principles. Further research and analysis are needed to explore the most effective ways for SWFs to engage with their respective governments and the international economic community to achieve the best possible economic outcomes while maintaining transparency, market fairness, and adherence to their institutional and governance frameworks. Salar Ghahramani is the founder of Global Policy Advisors® LLC. Comments are closed.
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SWF 2050™
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