Governments can move markets; this much is obvious. With the rise of SWFs, governments can also, in theory, profit from these movements. Such are the allegations currently being made against the Australian Future Fund over its August sale of Telstra, as the government announced its intention to split the company up less than a month later.
According to a Bloomberg article:
“The Australian Securities & Investments Commission will investigate whether the Future Fund was “tipped off” on the proposed separation of the country’s former phone monopoly.”
The Future Fund is already mounting its defense, noting that it had announced the intention to sell Telstra shares a long-time ago. In addition, the Fund claims to have had no such “tip-off”:
“We have already made absolutely clear publicly that the Board and Agency had no access to non-public price sensitive information,” said Will Hetherton, a spokesman for the Future Fund. “We will be happy to confirm this fact in response to any request from ASIC.”
Given the high standards of governance at the Future Fund, and its clear separation from political influence, I’m of the mind that it is innocent. However, this investigation flags up an interesting issue.
If a quick phone call from a politician to a SWF manager can mean the difference between hundreds of millions of profit or hundreds of millions of losses, there will undoubtedly be a temptation to make the call; especially if the gains will contribute to the country’s economic and social security (e.g. more secure pensions) or free up space in the budget for other spending. In countries with less robust governance and legal rules than Australia, will the temptation be too much?
To those unfamiliar with the internal contradictions of insider trading regimes with respect to gvt-related entities, the ASIC invetigation may look frivolous, but it appears that ASIC has as much reason to be suspicious here as in any case where a gvt controlled investor (but with an arms length investment management function) holds stock in a company completely reliant on gvt regulatory activity. As the residual claimant in the FF and the regulators of the Oz telecom sector, whatever the gvt and/or FF do is bound to produce lots of issues.Another reason to be careful with both investments and claims structures of extra budgetary gvt funds. Not that ASIC’s investigation is likely to show any untoward activity on the part of the FF or the souvereign.
Agreed.