After deciding to pro-actively do nothing during the financial crisis, the Qatar Investment Authority is now clearly doing something. Indeed, as David Lepeska noted yesterday in The National, “…the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) has been conspicuously active of late.”
Founded by the State of Qatar in 2005 to strengthen the country’s economy by diversifying into new asset classes, QIA decided to withdraw and regroup during the financial crisis, which was a strategy adopted by many SWFs.
Today, it was announced that the QIA is planning to sell half of its preferred shares in VW, which will net the SWF roughly $2.4 billion. This sale comes on the heels of the SWF’s sale of Barclays, which netted the fund over $1 billion. Apparently, the idea is to raise some additional cash for other investments.
Whether or not the fund actually invests in Sainsbury’s or takes a stake in a UK bank, which have been rumored as of late, it is clear that this SWF views the crisis as subsiding and the markets as primed for investment. Indeed, The National article notes that “deals are in the works.”
That’s great. To paraphrase the late, great Billy Preston, ‘nothing from nothing leaves nothing’, so SWFs should at least be doing something.
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