Sovereign wealth funds and foreign exchange reserves as state wealth

Wealth of people is now also found collected at the government level as SWF and Reserves. Truly these are wealth belonging to the peoples of the countries which have set up sovereign funds to manage the people’s wealth at the state level. Some 44 countries have a total of some US$ 5 trillion while the people’s foreign reserves managed by governments amount to some US$12 trillion. We note that these funds often give the countries some leverage in accessing investments in third countries disproportionate to the size of the countries having this SWF. The regulatory and management challenges of these funds are explored in this chapter.