국부펀드, 저유가 직격탄…투매 역풍 키우나

http://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2015122314432366484

국부펀드, 저유가 직격탄…투매 역풍 키우나

유가 급등에 몸집 키운 중동·亞 국부펀드 유가 급락에 타격

머니투데이 김신회 기자 |입력 : 2015.12.23 15:25

국제유가 급등세에 힘입어 몸집을 불린 국부펀드들이 저유가 기조에 직격탄을 맞았다.

월스트리트저널(WSJ)은 22일(현지시간) 중동과 아시아 지역 산유국 국부펀드들이 국제유가 급락세로 불확실성에 직면했다고 보도했다.

중앙 아시아 최대 산유국 카자흐스탄의 국부펀드인 삼룩카지나JSC가 대표적이다. 550억달러(약 64조5000억원)를 운용하는 것으로 알려진 삼룩은 카자흐스탄을 금융위기에서 건져냈고 카자흐스탄 정부가 참여한 2022년 동계올림픽 유치전에 돈을 대겠다고 나섰다.

그러나 최근 국제유가가 급락하면서 상황이 반전됐다. 삼룩은 지난 10월에 석유 관련 투자로 궁지에 몰린 자회사를 지원하기 위해 출범 이후 처음으로 15억달러를 차입했다.

WSJ는 삼룩처럼 중대국면에 직면한 국부펀드가 한둘 아니라고 했다. 국부펀드들은 대개 원유로 대표되는 원자재 수입과 이를 통해 키운 외환보유고를 밑천으로 삼지만 국제 원자재 가격은 역사적 저점으로 떨어진 지 오래다. 특히 중동과 아시아 지역의 국부펀드들은 강력한 경제 성장세와 국제유가 급등세를 배경으로 몸집을 대거 키웠지만 최근 국제유가가 급락하면서 궁지에 몰렸다. 말레이시아의 국영 투자회사인 1MDB는 최근 110억달러가 넘는 부채를 떠안고 채무조정과 구제금융에 의존하게 됐고 비리 의혹까지 맞물려 파문을 일으켰다.

JP모간 자산운용에 따르면 전 세계 국부펀드의 자산은 현재 7조2000억달러로 2007년에 비해 2배 넘게 늘었다. 이는 글로벌 헤지펀드와 PEF(사모펀드)의 운용자산을 모두 합한 것보다 많다. 국제금융협회(IIF) 집계로는 전 세계 국부펀드 수는 현재 79개로 2007년에 비해 44% 증가했다. 이들 국부펀드가 운용하는 자산의 60%가량이 원유를 비롯한 에너지 수출 수입에 의존하고 있다.

이에 따라 상당수 국부펀드는 자산이 급감했고 일부는 정부의 지원에 의지하게 됐다. 국부펀드들의 차입이나 자산매각도 흔한 일이 됐다. 

아드난 마자레이 국제통화기금(IMF) 중동 및 중앙 아시아 담당 부국장은 "이미 요동치고 있는 시장에서 국부펀드마저 억지로 자산을 매각해야 할 판이어서 걱정"이라고 말했다. 세계 경제를 둘러싼 불확실성에 투매 바람이 일고 있는 가운데 국부펀드마저 투매행렬에 동참하면 시장 불안이 더 커질 수 있다는 지적이다. 마자레이는 국부펀드가 언제, 어느 정도 규모의 자산매각에 나설지는 아무도 모른다고 덧붙였다.

WSJ는 국부펀드의 비밀주의가 불확실성을 더 자극한다고 지적했다. 국부펀드들이 자산을 얼마나 운용하는지, 어떤 자산을 보유하고 있는지, 전반적인 투자전략이 뭔지를 공개하지 않고 있기 때문이다. 세계 금융감독기구인 금융안정위원회(FSB)는 지난 9월에 국부펀드가 글로벌 금융시장에 영향을 미칠 잠재적 취약성을 조사하고 있다고 밝혔지만 구체적인 내용은 알려진 게 없다.

---

http://news.einfomax.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=201195

글로벌 국부펀드, 석유에 투자했다 '폭망'…시장 '골칫거리' 되나

승인 2015.12.23  17:01:31

(서울=연합인포맥스) 이슬기 기자 = 과거 유가가 상승할 때 우후죽순 격으로 생겼던 국부펀드가 유가 하락 국면을 만나게 되면서 위기에 빠졌다는 분석이 나오고 있다.

이들이 유동성 위기를 버티지 못하고 자산 매각에 앞다퉈 나서면 국제금융시장의 골칫거리로 떠오를 것으로 우려된다.

일부 국부펀드는 자산 규모와 투자 전략 등을 일체 공개하지 않아 어떤 위험이 있는지 베일에 싸여 있다는 지적도 나오고 있다.

22일(현지시간) 월스트리트저널(WSJ)은 "신흥국 경제가 성장하면서 아시아, 중동, 아프리카 지역에 있는 많은 국가가 국부펀드를 만들었다"며 "그러나 최근 유가가 떨어지며 (석유에 투자했던) 몇몇 펀드가 위기에 처했다"고 보도했다. 

국부펀드연구소 SWFI에 따르면 전 세계 국부펀드가 보유하고 있는 자산 규모는 7조2천억달러 수준으로 지난 2007년보다 두 배가량 증가했다. 이는 전 세계 헤지펀드가 운용하는 자금과 주식 펀드를 모두 합친 것보다도 많다. 

국제금융협회가 추적하는 펀드의 숫자는 지난 2007년보다 44% 증가한 79개였다. 이들 중 에너지 수출에 의존하는 자산은 60%에 달한다. 

미국 컨설팅업체인 타워스왓슨의 복재인 부사장은 "과거에는 국가가 군대를 조직했다면 지금은 국부펀드를 만드는 셈"이라고 말했다. 

가장 최근 새로운 국부펀드 바람은 가나와 앙골라와 같은 아프리카 국가에서 왔다. 아시아 국가 중에서는 말레이시아 국부펀드 1MDB가 합류했다. 

국부펀드는 과거 유가 상승세를 따라 몸집을 빠르게 불렸으나 최근 유가가 하락세로 전환하다 보니 이 펀드들은 투자금을 회수하거나 자산을 매각해 자금을 수혈해야 할 위기에 처했다.

최근 카자흐스탄 국부펀드인 'Samruk-Kazyna JSC'는 지난 10월 신디케이트론으로 15억달러를 조달했다. 원유 관련 투자로 재정난에 처한 자회사를 돕기 위한 조치다. 

이 펀드의 대표는 "우리가 투자한 석유회사가 손해를 보고 있다"며 "현재로서는 상황에 적응하려고 노력하고 있다"고 밝혔다.

사우디아라비아의 중앙은행이자 세계 국부펀드인 사우디아라비아 통화청(SAMA)은 올해 올해 수십억달러의 자산을 매각했고, 전 세계 최대 국부펀드인 노르웨이 국부펀드(GPFG)는 내년에 사상 처음으로 새로운 자금 보강을 계획하고 있다고 밝혔다. 

국제통화기금(IMF)의 아드난 마자레이 중동 및 중앙아시아 담당 부국장은 "시장이 이미 혼란을 겪고 있는 상황에서 국부펀드마저 자산 매각 압박을 받는 것이 걱정"이라며 "유동성 우려도 있는 상황에서 국부펀드가 자산을 회수한다면 가격이 급변동할 수 있다"고 경고했다. 

애널리스트들은 국부펀드들의 그들의 자산 규모와 투자 전략 등을 보여주지 않기 때문에 위험이 더욱 커지고 있다고 지적했다. 이들은 "어떤 위험이 있는지 예측할 수 없어 금융시장에 부담이 된다"고 말했다.

---

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trouble-with-sovereign-wealth-funds-1450836278

The Trouble With Sovereign-Wealth Funds

Government funds proliferated with oil’s rise. Now some are troubled

By SIMON CLARK in London, MIA LAMAR in Hong Kong and BRADLEY HOPE in New York

Biography

@bradleyhope

bradley.hope@wsj.com

Dec. 22, 2015 9:04 p.m. ET

Kazakhstan’s $55 billion sovereign-wealth fund helped pull the country through the global financial crisis and offered funding for the country’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

But the collapse in oil prices has hit Kazakhstan and its fund, Samruk-Kazyna JSC, hard. In October, the fund borrowed $1.5 billion in its first syndicated loan to help a cash-strapped subsidiary saddled with a troubled oil-field investment.

“Our oil company lost lots of its revenues,” says the fund’s chief executive, Umirzak Shukeyev. “Currently, we are trying to adjust to the situation.”

Funds like Samruk are at a critical juncture. For years, sovereign-wealth funds—financial vehicles owned by governments—swelled in size and number, fueled by rising oil prices and leaders’ aspirations to increase economic growth, invest abroad and boost political influence. A new wave of sovereign funds came from African countries like Ghana and Angola. Asian nations joined in with funds like 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB.

The world’s sovereign-wealth funds together have assets of $7.2 trillion, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, which studies them. That is twice their size in 2007, and more than is managed by all the world’s hedge funds and private-equity funds combined, according to J.P. Morgan Asset Management. The number of funds tracked by the Institute of International Finance is up 44% to 79 since the end of 2007. Nearly 60% of sovereign-wealth-fund assets are in funds dependent on energy exports.

Now, some funds are shrinking or are being tapped by governments as oil revenues fall. That is forcing them to borrow or sell investments, potentially pressuring global markets just as other investors are pulling back from risk. Saudi Arabia’s central bank, which functions in some ways like a sovereign-wealth fund as it holds significant reserves that are invested widely, has sold billions in assets this year. Norway says it plans to tap its fund, the world’s largest, for the first time in 2016.

The stress from low energy prices comes at a sensitive time. At least two funds are embroiled in controversy. 1MDB, which amassed $11 billion in debt, is the subject of at least nine investigations at home and abroad. one of its main financial backers was an Abu Dhabi fund. The head of South Korea’s fund stepped down in the wake of a public outcry over his plan to invest in the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.

Officials at 1MDB declined to comment. Previously, they said they would cooperate with all investigations.

Uncertainty

Adnan Mazarei, deputy director of the International Monetary Fund’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, says the worry is sovereign-wealth funds will be forced to sell during a period of already turbulent markets. “A withdrawal of assets by sovereign-wealth funds against the background of liquidity concerns could lead to large price movements,” he says. “Nobody knows how much or when but the concern is there.”

Uncertainty is stoked by the fact that many of the funds don’t disclose their size, holdings or investment strategies, making it hard to gauge what risk, if any, they pose to the global financial system. While others provide clear disclosure and have good governance, sovereign-wealth funds constitute a large blind spot in the markets, analysts say.

Global financial regulators are investigating “potential vulnerabilities” of sovereign-wealth funds that could affect world markets, the Basel-based Financial Stability Board said in September. An FSB spokesman says it is too soon to comment on the analysis.

Sovereign-wealth funds are largely funded by commodity revenue and foreign-exchange reserves. Their ranks can include government pension plans and economic development funds like Malaysia’s 1MDB and Samruk, which was established in 2008 to hold Kazakhstan’s state companies with an eye to selling them off and investing the proceeds.

As emerging markets grew wealthier, many countries started sovereign-wealth funds. More than three-quarters of assets are in funds from emerging markets, with many of the biggest based in the Middle East and Asia. The latest wave comes from Africa.

“In the old days you built armies,” says Jayne Bok, head of sovereign advisory in Asia for consulting firm Towers Watson. “Now you build a sovereign-wealth fund.”

Many have kept funds in low-risk, highly liquid investments. ​ But as assets grew and global yields tumbled, some invested more in less-liquid assets. They bought real estate, took big stakes in companies and made other hard-to-trade investments.

Government investment funds have borrowed roughly $100 billion since 2007, according to figures reported to Dealogic and analyzed by The Wall Street Journal. About two-thirds of that borrowing has come from net oil exporters such as Bahrain and Kazakhstan.

Selling is picking up. Sovereign-wealth funds yanked roughly $100 billion from asset managers in the six months to Sept. 30, according to Morgan Stanley. “The countries that have accumulated these vast reserves over the last 20 years will be dipping into those reserves,” Martin Gilbert, chief executive of $430 billion Aberdeen Asset Management, told reporters in November. “It could be a difficult 2016.”

The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency sold​close to $2 billion of European shares this year through November, according to Nasdaq. Its reserves have fallen 13% to $647 billion in the 12 months through the end of October. The agency didn’t respond to inquiries.

In South Korea, where the government tracks foreign ownership of stocks, Saudi state-owned investment funds have sold local stocks for six months straight totaling roughly 3.6 trillion won ($3.1 billion), according to people familiar with the matter and official regulatory data.

The International Monetary Fund, examining the fallout of low oil prices, said in October that a large-scale liquidation of government funds’ extensive bondholdings could drive up interest rates. “A substantial change in the path of asset accumulation by sovereign wealth funds,” it said, “will likely have a direct effect on financial markets.”

U.S. Federal Reserve economists have estimated that five-year Treasury rates would rise by about 0.40 to 0.60 percentage point if foreign official inflows into U.S. Treasurys were to decrease by $100 billion in any given month. That would push rates to their highest level since 2011.

Predicting a sovereign-fund selloff’s impact is difficult because many funds disclose almost nothing. “The problem with sovereign wealth funds is that too often they prove to be ‘black boxes’ into which funds are deposited in a non-transparent fashion,” says Sarah Chayes, a former special adviser to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she researches corruption.

There is a push to get funds to adhere to a voluntary code of conduct known as the Santiago Principles, which calls for annual reporting, clear governance rules and effective risk management, among other things. The chairman of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Adrian Orr, has said he wants members to adopt the highest standards of transparency and governance.

“Not doing so bankrupts the principles, leaving them worthless for all,” Mr. Orr said in September. He also runs New Zealand’s Super Fund, which invests government money to fund future pension payments.

But Mr. Orr has little power to get funds to comply, as membership in the forum doesn’t require funds to implement the high standards he is urging. At least five of the 29 forum members don’t publish public annual reports. At least four don’t disclose their asset size.

Singapore’s GIC and the Qatar Investment Authority were named to the forum’s board in September. While both have signed up to the Santiago Principles, GIC is only partially compliant and Qatar is noncompliant, according to analysis by GeoEconomica, a Swiss political-risk advisory firm. Neither discloses how much money it manages. Qatar doesn’t publish an annual report.

“We do not report on investment specifics, to safeguard our competitive edge,” says a GIC spokeswoman. The GIC takes the Santiago Principles seriously, she says. The Qatar fund said last year it would publish an annual report, which its website says is “coming soon.” A fund spokesman declined to comment. “It is not part of IFSWF’s mandate to comment on member practices,” Mr. Orr says in an interview.

The case of 1MDB

The situations at Malaysia’s 1MDB and Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co., or IPIC, are examples of exploitation of weak oversight at government investment funds, says Ms. Chayes, the former U.S. special adviser.

Executives at 1MDB are selling assets to repay debt. The new management at IPIC is now trying to determine how the fund guaranteed bonds and investments by 1MDB valued at more than $7 billion, say people familiar with the matter.

IPIC and U.A.E. spokesmen declined to comment for this article.

The deals between IPIC and 1MDB began in 2009 with a public promise by Abu Dhabi to invest $1 billion in projects alongside the newly formed 1MDB. It is unclear how the commitment transformed into guarantees for 1MDB. Those include $3.5 billion of bonds, about $1.5 billion of interest on those loans over their lifetime and $2.3 billion of investments with a Cayman Islands-registered fund, according to company documents and people familiar with the deals.

The transactions occurred under IPIC’s managing director, Khadem Al Qubaisi, who took over in 2007. Under Mr. Al Qubaisi, the fund’s net debt grew almost tenfold to $24.6 billion.

Executives now digging into IPIC’s operations also found a subsidiary of the fund bought shares of a publicly listed construction company from an associate of Mr. Al Qubaisi’s and bought large amounts of land from the private investment vehicle of the fund’s chairman, Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, say people familiar with the matter. Sheikh Mansour didn’t respond to inquiries.

In a rare presidential decree in April, Mr. Al Qubaisi was replaced at IPIC. A London-based representative of Mr. Al Qubaisi says he declined to comment. The new managing director, Suhail Al Mazrouei—he is also the country’s energy minister—ordered a review of the company with a view to returning to its original mandate of investing in oil and gas projects. Mr. Al Mazrouei didn’t respond to inquiries.

Long-running concerns about sovereign-wealth funds have centered on the idea that they don’t behave like traditional institutional investors, which typically invest only to produce returns. Sovereign funds often answer to top government officials and may invest not only to produce returns but also to further government initiatives, usually focused on economic development or diplomacy.

Those concerns peaked before the financial crisis when the funds were seen as “agents of the state executing ‘checkbook’ foreign policy strategies,” said the sovereign-wealth forum’s Mr. Orr in September.

But after the financial crisis hit, political concerns faded, says Jukka Pihlman, head of central banks and sovereign-wealth funds at Standard Chartered PLC. “Many countries just wanted the capital,” Mr. Pihlman says. “The tables turned quite significantly.”

Other countries’ sovereign-wealth funds quickly came to the aid of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF, when U.S. and European sanctions restricted business between the fund and Western companies. The fund is on the U.S. sanctions list drawn up to punish Moscow for annexing Crimea last year.

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his annual dinner for foreign investors in a seaside palace built for Peter the Great. Around the table were officials of sovereign-wealth funds who together manage trillions in assets, according to RDIF, which organized the gathering. Representatives of funds from China, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain, South Korea, Iran, France and Italy attended the conference during which the meeting was held, according to a Russian-language statement on the Kremlin’s website.

Korea Investment Corp., the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Bahrain’s Mumtalakat fund confirmed their officials attended the conference. The Qatari and Kuwaiti funds declined to comment. The Chinese, Italian and French funds didn’t respond to inquiries.

One important new guest: Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old Saudi Arabian defense minister and second in line to the throne. He agreed the next month to invest $10 billion in Russia. A few months later, a Kuwaiti sovereign fund pledged $500 million, raising its total commitment to $1 billion.

“The headline may seem political, but, in fact, it is not a blank check,” a Saudi official says, adding that Russian investments offer among the highest yields in the world. Kuwait Investment Authority executive director Ahmad Bastaki declined to comment.

​“For us, it’s about finding additional money to invest in Russia,” says Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian fund’s chief executive. The fund is “nonpolitical” and focused on returns, he says. “Those sanctions really do not affect our work much.” ​​

—Ahmed Al Omran in Riyadh, Juliet Samuel in London and Kwanwoo Jun in Seoul contributed to this article.

Write to Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com, Mia Lamar at mia.lamar@wsj.com and Bradley Hope at bradley.hope@wsj.com

---