As reported by Reuters, public sector investor assets have surged to $36 trillion, climbing by 7.3% in the measure’s largest climb in five years.
Key quotes
“The Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) tracks the assets of 750 institutional investors such as central banks, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and public sector pension funds and ranks them by size in its Global Public Investor report.
In this year’s report, OMFIF noted that one-fifth of the $2.5 trillion rise was concentrated in four institutions – Norges Bank Investment Management, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the Swiss National Bank and Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund.
In total, pension fund assets rose 8.1 percent or $1.1 trillion, central bank assets 7.8 percent or $959 billion, and SWF assets 5.1 percent or $397 billion.
“Assets were boosted by the continued global economic recovery, particularly across advanced economies,” OMFIF said in the report, adding that Europe had enjoyed the largest increase of 11.8 percent to $7.6 trillion, led by central bank reserves.
A rise in the gold price XAU= helped, with central banks globally adding 371 tonnes of gold in 2017, bringing total holdings to almost 31,800 tonnes, the highest level since the 1990s.”
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