Equatorial Guinea made a relatively rare foray into the global news earlier this month for a presidential pardon of  former British army officer Simon Mann, who was serving a 34-year prison sentence in the country for his role in a failed coup d'etat in 2004.

Gabriel Obiang Lima, vice minister of mines, industry and energy, was in London to talk about his ambition for the country. "Our aim is not to be the Kuwait of the region. It's to be the Singapore of the region," he told dozens of business executives in a conference in London on Wednesday.

"Equatorial Guinea has to have other industries that are not dependent on oil and gas."

But it has a long way to go towards establishing a Singapore-like country. The U.S. State Department says application of the laws remains selective and corruption among officials is widespread, and many business deals are concluded under nontransparent circumstances.

The vice minister says Equatorial Guinea is investing heavily in ports, health care and infrastructure.

"Talk is cheap but we have to deliver," he said, wrapping up his 40-minute speech.

The Linaburg-Maduell index is calculated with 10 principles -- such as whether the fund provides up-to-date, independently audited annual reports, or whether it provides clear strategies and objectives. It also gives points on whether the fund gives ownership percentage of company hodlings, total market value, returns and management compensation.

Enhancing transparency is a key task for sovereign wealth funds, whose often opaque operations have come under heavy criticism by some Western politicians who suspect them of investing with political, rather than commercial, motives.

In fact in the recent meeting of the world's leading sovereign wealth funds, only Norway, Chile, New Zealand agreed in advance to speak to Reuters on the sidelines; when contacted on the ground China also spoke. Others either declined to comment at all or did not return email.

(Source: SWF Institute; www.swfinstitute.org)

But Mustafa Abdel-Wadood, managing director of Abraaj Capital -- the Middle East's biggest private equity firm -- sees SRI as enlightened self interest and the firm puts its own money where its mouth is.

Fred Sicre, executive director of Abraaj, told us the firm -- which signs up to United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing (UNPRI) -- has a 5+5+5 plan, where it encourages employees to donate 5% of bonuses to a charitable pool, 5 days for community/charitable work and the firm itself gives 5% of net revenues to a charity. Sicre himself taught at the first class yesterday on entrepreneureship.

"When we invest for pure business reasons into an education business or a hospital group, in a certain sense, we are looking at this also from a sustainable investment (point of view) for this region because the competitiveness of a country is directly linked to the health of the population," Sicre says.

"We feel we have great opportunities and responsibilities to bring portfolio companies to adhere to sustainble investment practices, whether its security or health standards... It's just about being good human beings and doing good practical businesses."

Watch a clip below for Sicre talking about this 5+5+5 plan.

The fund has just over 10 percent in Australian equities, 22.8 percent in global equities. Safer instruments dominate, with debt holdings at 24 percent and cash at 31 percent.

The mixed-asset fund significantly underperforms an equity-only portfolio. For example, the MSCI world equity index has risen more than 17 percent in the Q3 alone.

The Future Fund is a rare SWF which reports results quarterly, like a public-listed firm. The underperformance might outrage the public though -- so is this worth it?

Recall remarks last month by David Murray, the fund's chairman of the board of guardians , which highlighted some downsides in reporting quarter after quarter.

"We are happy to report but it does create some significant difficulties. If forces the community to take very short term views in returns in the fund and causes management of the fund to be concerned about media and community responses," he said at a SWF meeting in Azerbaijan earlier this month.

Jin Liqun, chairman of the board of supervisors at China Investment Corp, was more direct.

 "SWFs are not publicly traded companies. We do not have obligations to publish quarterly information to the public. Indeed, this kind of quarterly disclose has done more harm than good. It has encouraged managers to do reckless things," Jin told Reuters in Baku.

The meeting is set to focus on the monetary union -- facing challenges after the UAE followed Oman in withdrawing from the plan for the euro-style single currency bloc.

Most of the participants --  who also include  number of key Gulf commercial bank chiefs and Dominic Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF -- are here for less than 24 hours though. They are meeting for dinner tonight in the luxury seaside hotel set in a bay surrounded by rugged mountains, once a paradise for treasure smugglers. 

(Photo: the royal palace in Muscat)

Wrapping up their inaugural meeting in the capital of Azerbaijan, 20 leading sovereign wealth funds urged host countries to make their investment regimes more transparent and discriminatory and keep investment borders and flows as open as possible. (For the story click here).

This comes after years of host countries -- the West -- asking them to open their books.

Much of the two-day meeting which ended on Friday was held behind closed doors, but the organisers -- Azerbaijan's state oil fund -- let media in with cameras and video recorders to film the final 5 minutes of the meeting.

Watch what David Murray, chair of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds and also chairman of Australia's Future Fund said at the end of the meeting (with some holiday advise) and at the start of the news conference.

A year after adopting the Santiago Principles of best practice guidelines, they are meeting next to the Caspian sea to review investment activities and assess how regulation and efforts to open up are helping them gain wider acceptance in a still-sceptical world.

The participants include SWFs from China, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Australia, Libya, Ireland, Singapore and New Zealand. The meeting is hosted by the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan - which made a record (and rare for SWFs) profit last year thanks to a conservative investment strategy.  The $11-billion fund, which made a record profit of around $300 million, or 3.7-3.8 percent in 2008, has said it wants to add riskier assets back onto the portfolio gradually.

The meeting comes as a report to be published this week shows a sharp fall in investment activity in Q2. According to global consultancy Monitor Group, SWfs made 11 investments totalling $3.5 billion in Q2, the lowest spending since the final three months of 2004.

Nineteen deals have been either announced or pending completion during the three months ending June, suggesting that activity might improve later this year. Monitor says the funds returned to investing in real estate after they had steered well clear over the previous two quarters.

"SWFs are cautiously returning to the market with a long-term approach to their investments, putting their losses behind them and resuming the business of investing abroad," it says.

(Photo by Natsuko Waki)

It all sounds good, but the biggest shortfall of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is that it lacks convincing performance details. Therefore, SRI or ethical investing for SWFs is not just about returns: It allows them to combine a multitude of objectives, such as portfolio diversification, enhancing transparency, meeting social goals and gaining acceptance even among critics who suspect they operate politically.

SRI, already a $2.71 trillion industry in the US, involves buying shares in companies that manage environmental, social and governance risks. For example, firms which make clean technologies are in, while businesses that pollute the environment, abuse human rights or produce nuclear arms are out.

Norway is leading the pack with its $400-billion sovereign wealth fund. It names and shames companies the fund expels for not meeting its criteria and pushes the management to be greener.

For more read the analysis here.

According to a survey of 49 leading investors in the United States, Britain, continental Europe and Japan, investors now hold an average of 54.9 percent of their portfolios in equities.

This is the lowest level since February and below the long-term average of 59.3 percent.

For more graphics click here and here.