Skip to main content
Centre for Commercial Law Studies

Sovereign Wealth Funds: A Review of Their Governance and Role

When: Monday, September 18, 2023, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: Online

Watch this event on YouTube

The London Financial Regulation Seminar is an inter-collegiate and inter-disciplinary group of experts led by CCLS and our Institute of Banking and Finance under the leadership of Professor Rosa M. Lastra and Dr. Daniele D’Alvia.

On Monday 18 September 2023, Dr. Lucia Satragno discussed the governance and role of sovereign wealth funds. Prof. Lastra chaired the event, and Mr. Diego Lopez was the discussant.

Dr. Lucia Satragno is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Banking and Finance Law (CBFL), National University of Singapore since 2020. Before joining CBFL, she worked as a doctoral fellow in monetary and financial law at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern (2015-2020) and as a research fellow at the same institute (2012-2014). She also worked as a legal counsel in banking and finance law for a major law firm (2004-2009) and a corporate bank (2009-2010) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Mr. Diego Lopez is the Managing Director of Global SWF, based in New York. He is a world-renowned expert in Sovereign Wealth Funds, having acted as a practitioner and advisor for many years and published several articles in leading academic journals. He has worked as an external consultant for the World Bank and the United Nations and supported the establishment or reformulation of a number of SWFs around the world. Prior to founding Global SWF, he spent five years building up PwC’s footprint in the SWF industry as the Director and COO of the global practice. He started his career in Santander and spent several years in Accuracy and KPMG.

Sovereign Wealth Funds (‘SWF’) are a heterogeneous group of government-owned investment vehicles that have evolved considerably since their inception to become mainstream players in global financial markets. Enhancements to their institutional and governance arrangements during the past decade have helped SWFs overcome certain corners over their purposes and the quality of their investments. During this presentation, Dr. Satragno analyses the evolution of SWF’s governance arrangements from a multi-level governance prospective. In doing so, she examines how SWFs – as investment vehicles primarily focused on foreign investments – have taken on expanded roles and become invaluable domestic policy tools that their home countries can rely on to deal with crises. In particular, this presentation offers a study of the different regulatory approaches to SWFs and explores Singapore’s two funds – GIC Private Limited and Temasek Holdings – as illustrative case studies.

Back to top