Les fonds souverains (SWFs en anglais) : les réactions des pays développés à leur développement actuel

During the last years characterized by financial and economic turmoil, Sovereign Wealth Funds (swfs) have attracted increasing attention mainly due to their intervention in the rescue of the American and European financial systems, when they injected funds in many banks like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley or UBS. They now manage an estimated $3.9 trillion invested in equity, bonds and hedge funds and this amount is estimated to double by 2015. Despite a broad variety of definitions, the International Monetary Fund defines a sovereign wealth fund as a government investment vehicle funded by the accumulation of foreign exchange assets and managed separately from the official reserves of the monetary authorities. However, even though swfs as active investors provide economy with undeniable benefits like supplying the market with necessary liquidity, sovereign wealth funds have met much apprehension mainly due to the very little information available regarding their structure, objectives and investment strategies, thus creating favorable conditions for the emergence of protectionist laws in the OECD countries. From this perspective, developed economies fear that swfs, as investment vehicles of authoritarian or communist governments in most cases, might have not the same interests as a private investor. More specifically, they are sought to pursue strategic and political objectives rather than having purely financial motivations. Moreover, by investing in sectors like financial services, transportation, energy and utilities, aerospace and defense etc, swfs would want to transfer technology or could even represent a threat to national security given the opacity of their investments' rationale. In response to this phenomenon, most OECD countries have adopted protective laws and the international institutions have been charged to develop guidelines and transparency principles pertaining to investments by swfs, which has lead to the publication by the International Working Group of Sovereign Wealth Funds (IWG) of a voluntary code of conduct for these funds in October 2008 known as "Santiago principles". The aim of this paper is to study in-depth the reactions of developed countries as recipients of swfs investments following the increasing focus of public attention on the activity of swfs and to analyze the basis and relevancy of arguments presented by these countries willing to better frame the funds. Our work is based on research articles discussing the activity of Sovereign Wealth Funds as well as on reports made by the International Monetary Fund or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We also utilize specialized press articles in order to present specific examples that support our analysis.