Just when investors were settling down to lock in a few of the year’s profits and put their feet up for the end of the year holidays, a black swan has come waddling out of the desert to put everything on edge.

The unwelcome cygnus atratus came in the form of Gulf emirate Dubai telling creditors of Dubai World and property group Nakheel that debt repayments would be delayed.  Fears of contagion spread widely, hitting world stocks, lifting the dollar out of its basement and driving demand for European debt so much that a roughly 6-month trading range for futures was breached.

It all may settle down soon. Dubai says the problem does not apply to its big international ports group.  Meanwhile, the emirate is a pretty leveraged place, but fellow emirates and neighbouring countries such as Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pretty flush with cash. They could even step in to help as a matter of solidarity.

At least for now, though,  it is showing just how interlinked everything is.  Ok, of course, banks get hit when people worry about expsosure. But who would have thought that a European car company  would get clobbered by a debt problem in the Gulf?

The issue is those sovereign wealth funds that have been recycling their country surpluses into investments elsewhere. Qatar owns 10 percent of Porsche, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait own 17 percent of Daimler between them. So it is not just investors worrying about their money in the region, it is investors also worrying about where the region’s money is.

Is country risk taking on a new meaning?

Chile, UAE, Singapore, Azerbaijan, Ireland and Norway claim top rankings on the latest transparency index, published by SWF Institute. At the bottom of the ranking is Venezuela, Oman, Nigeria, Mauritania, Kiribati, Iran, Brunei and Algeria.

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)

Australia's Future Fund reveals that the fund's mixed asset portfolio (excluding Telstra holding) returned 5.6 percent in the third quarter.

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.

They may be placing smaller bets, but sovereign wealth funds were back with a vengeance in the third quarter.

Global corporate mergers and acquisitions activity involving sovereign wealth funds jumped sixfold to nearly $22 billion in the quarter, with 37 deals completed. Global announced M&A volumes involving state investment vehicles stood at $21.8 billion, up from $3.6 billion in the second quarter, according to our data.

The number of deals more than doubled from 17 in the April-June period. Only two weeks into the fourth quarter, there were five pending or completed deals with a combined value of $164.7 million. At the height of the boom in the first quarter of 2006, sovereign wealth funds sealed 35 deals worth $45.7 billion.

Managers at sovereign wealth funds -- those who have kept their jobs -- probably feel they have a lot to make up for, having lost most of some $80 billion they poured into banking shares before the peak of the crisis.

The world's leading sovereign wealth funds are gathering in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, for a two-day inaugural meeting which ends on Friday.

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)

Sovereign wealth funds, eager to be accepted in the West, are increasingly interested in showing the world that they care about environment and governance by investing in socially responsible firms.

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.

Government-owned institutions are becoming big drivers of sustainable investing — or buying firms which are socially and environmentally responsible, or sectors which tackle climate change or resource scarcity.

Norway’s $400-billion-plus sovereign wealth fund, which is the world’s second largest, is a big advocate of “green” investing, naming and shaming companies which do not fit the investment guidelines set by the government.

The guidelines rule out holding investments in certain firms,  for instance those that produce nuclear arms or cluster munitions, or that damage the environment or abuse human rights.

It has just expelled Israel’s Elbit Systems for supplying surveillance equipment for the West Bank separation barrier.

RCM, equity-management arm of Allianz Global Investors, says that sustainable investment is gaining momentum and offers investors a unique diversifier.

RCM’s sustainability investment fund, which has the French public pension scheme ERAFP among its clients, likes firms which manage Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks or sectors which are engaged in trends such as demographic trends, climate change (eg solar power) or resource scarcity.

Water is one of RCM’s themes – also for Norway’s SWF and other investors – given the limited supply of water and unsustainable global water usage.

The ethical investment policies of Norway’s SWF is closely studied by researchers from Oxford University (who runs Oxford SWF Project) in a new paper just published.

Click here to see the performance of sustainability investing and world stocks.

As the world moves closer to the end of the credit crisis, sovereign wealth funds around the world are experiencing mixed fortunes.

Good news comes from Singapore's SWF Temasek, which springs back into gains with its portfolio climbing 32 percent between April to end-July after a 30 percent loss in the year to end-March.

Announcing its annual performance report (which should please the country's taxidrivers), Temasek said it is open to investing in financials and resources in the long term and it has bought stakes in South Korea's ENK, cylinder suppliers, and Brazil's oilfield services firm San Antonio.

Moving towards the Middle East, Dubai World, a state-owned holding company, is struggling to restructure its subsidiaries.

It has moved several executives to its Istithmar unit, which owns struggling high-end retailer Barney's New York, from its real estate unit Nakheel, which is trying to refinance $3.52 bln Islamic bonds maturing in December.

Istithmar is seen as sovereign private equity, which takes a high leverage to invest in firms, with some estimates that the capital was levered up up to 7-10 times.

Istithmar's Barney's, with stores in locations including New York and Beverly Hills, has struggled in the recession as wealthy consumers have cut back on spending.

Nakheel alone has cut around 900 jobs since the downturn began, put projects on hold and sold stakes in an Australian developer.

Dubai World has filed a lawsuit in the United States this week against the former head of a subsidiary it accuses of fraud costing the firm millions of dollars.

Dubai World has $59 billion of liabilities, a large proportion of the Gulf emirate's total debt.

A growing number of Investors, including state-owned funds, are looking to invest in water to benefit from efforts to tackle climate change.

According to multi-asset manager Armstrong Investment Managers, less than 0.01 percent of water is easily accessible freshwater and global water use has tripled since 1950 — increasing faster than the world’s population.

“Demographic and climate changes will lead to two thirds of the population inhabiting areas with scarce water,” the firm says.

Armstrong likes water equipment and water treatment stocks and water utilities as these should benefit from sustainable growth opportunities.

Norway’s $350 billion sovereign wealth fund is aiming to invest 20 billion crown ($3.24 billion) investments over the next five years into water and other environmental technologies, such as carbon-capture storage and waste and pollution management.

The Norwegian fund says water was an important input or production factor for about 1,100 companies in its, whose combined market value is some $43 billion.

The easing of the credit crisis is giving way for a new generation of sovereign wealth funds.

Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Bolivia, Nigeria, Canada are just some of the places where a public debate has begun on establishing some form of sovereign wealth fund. And even Scotland is now looking at establishing such a fund to manage oil wealth.

China is also close to launching an agency to restructure and consolidate state-owned enterprises -- dubbed by Chinese media as CIC 2.0 in reference to the country's $200 bln SWF China Investment Corp.

Ashby Monk, expert on SWFs and research fellow at Oxford University, says the crisis may have highlighted the importance of having SWFs and having extra cash to deal with the emergency.

"There is this appetite for governments to set up new SWFs. Certain countries have taken considerable utility from having SWFs and a pool of cash during the crisis," he says.

"Coming out of this crisis, we are going to see SWFs increase in the same way central bank reserves increased coming out of the 1997 crisis. All these new funds may be the conduits for a real dramatic ramp-up of sovereign wealth funds."

And the projected growth of the SWF industry is eyebrow raising. The industry is set to double its size to $7 trillion in the next 10 years, according to Deutsche Bank estimates. And there's no doubt that SWF2.0 will help the growth.