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"We're not
going to disclose just how much, year by year, we make or we lose
because that's none of their business.”
- Lee
Kuan Yew
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IMF
asks Singapore to help set SWF benchmarks
Reuters
24
Jan
08
http://www.reuters.com/article/etfNews/idUSSIN31509320080124
Singapore,
along with Norway and Abu Dhabi, has been asked by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help set disclosure
benchmarks for sovereign wealth funds, a local newspaper reported
on Thursday, quoting Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan
Yew.
"We've put up certain ideas. They're considering
it. They are using us and Abu Dhabi and the Norwegians as
benchmarks, to get us to set benchmarks for the rest," the
Straits Times quoted Lee, who is also chairman of the Government
of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), as saying in
Riyadh.
"Whether that would work and make the Chinese
and others also be as open, that's another question," said
Lee, Singapore's first prime minister, who is on a visit to Saudi
Arabia.
GIC last week bought a stake worth $6.88 billion
in Citigroup, just one month after its $9.75 billion injection
into UBS AG, amidst rising global concerns of the influence of
sovereign wealth funds of countries including China, Russia and
the Middle East.
GIC's sister investment firm Temasek
Holdings last month also bought $4.4 billion worth of Merrill
Lynch stock.
Lee said GIC is prepared to be more
transparent about the sectors it is investing in, but will stop
short of disclosing how much it invests in each sector.
"We're
not going to disclose just how much, year by year, we make or we
lose because that's none of their business. What they want to
know is, 'Are we manipulating the market?'," he said.
Lee
had revealed last year that the fund had earned an average return
of 9.5 percent annually over the last 25 years in U.S. dollar
terms.
The GIC invests more than US$100 billion of
Singapore's foreign reserves abroad. It handles three quarters of
its portfolio internally and outsources the rest to external fund
managers.
Lee said Singapore was a passive investor, whose
funds were more finite than those of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia
and other oil-rich countries.
He said he saw the current
stock market crash as "a magnificent opportunity" for
countries with reserves to acquire non-controlling stakes in some
of the world's largest companies, "which are bound to
recover by the next cycle".
(Reporting by Daryl
Loo; Editing by Valerie Lee)
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