Despite $600bn Under Management, ADIA Reporting Short on Details

On September 13, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which ranks as the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world according to Institutional Investor’s annual survey with $600 billion under management, released its second annual review. In keeping with the precedent set by its first review, released in March 2010, the new document offers very few details about the vast fund’s investment activities over the past year.

ADIA明确指出，它并没有将年度审查描述为一份报告，而且它也没有给出太多的统计数据。ADIA对其庞大投资组合的表现进行了严格限制，只披露了资产配置的最基本细节。发掘信息需要耐心和对细微差别的鉴赏。例如，在最近的一次审查中，ADIA披露了20年和30年期的年化收益率。去年，ADIA的投资组合实现了7.6%的20年年年化收益率，鉴于2009年的20年年化收益率仅为6.5%，这表明该基金在2010年取得了正业绩。其30年的年化收益率在2010年为8.1%，高于2009年底的8.0%。

这些细节与澳大利亚投资管理局（ADIA）所掌握的细节差不多，与中国投资公司（China Investment Corp.）最近的年报形成鲜明对比。该公司最近发布的年报显示，其资产配置战略发生了变化，以反映长期投资的重要性日益增强，并在去年大举转向另类投资。ADIA不愿提供更多数据，这让那些提供主权财富基金界政策性报道的分析师感到沮丧。总部位于日内瓦的政治和经济咨询集团Geoeconomica的创始人兼董事总经理斯文•贝伦特（svenbehrendt）表示：“这是我在报告中发现的唯一一个财务信息稳健的例子。“这些甚至都不是年度回报。”

Understanding how ADIA achieved those results remains largely a mystery. In an introductory letter to the review, Managing Director Hamed bin Zayed Al Nehayan stated that ADIA had “continued to benefit during 2010 from its decision a year earlier to tilt exposures in the portfolio towards asset classes and regions able to benefit from better growth prospects.” Based on macroeconomic data, that statement would seem to indicate that ADIA had turned its attention away from the slow-growing economies of the developed world and is now paying more heed to faster-growing emerging markets.

Documenting such a shift in its asset allocation strategy, however, is difficult. Unlike many of its peers, ADIA does not disclose actual asset allocations; it simply provides neutral benchmark ranges — within which, actual asset allocations may fluctuate widely. Those broad benchmark ranges have remained fixed since 2009. Based on information that the former Managing Director, Ahmed bin Zayed al Nehayan, Hamed’s brother, shared with Businessweek in a rare interview in June 2008, however, several changes have been made in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

自2008年以来，ADIA已将发达市场股票投资的资产配置目标区间从之前的45%降至55%，下调至35%至45%。不出意外的是，其新兴市场股票的基准区间已从之前的8%至12%攀升至10%至20%。澳大利亚投资局资产类别基准区间中唯一的另一个重大变化是现金，最低值保持在0%，但最高值增加了5个百分点，达到10%。自2008年以来，该基金没有明显改变其他资产类别的目标范围。

Despite its reluctance to reveal its actual asset allocations, ADIA made a point of devoting more space in the 2010 review to broad-based discussions of individual asset classes, which gave a few, fleeting glimpses of its internal workings. According to the review, 80 percent of ADIA’s assets are currently managed by external fund managers, whose activities, ADIA says, are monitored daily; the balance of assets are managed internally. Those percentage have not changed since 2009. Among the developments at ADIA in 2010, however, was a decision to create two new equity portfolios, Active Latin America and Active India, in the context of its internal equities department. The move may well reflect ADIA’s earlier decision to tilt its equities exposure to emerging markets. In its alternative investments department, ADIA revealed that it had funded several early-stage or emerging managed-futures funds, which will sit within their own a separate portfolio for promising managers, created in 2009, until they prove worthy of being incorporated in the main managed funds portfolio. And in its private equties department, ADIA continued to gradually broaden its geographic exposure to investments in developing private equity markets, which it defines as parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa — as well some developed markets such as Australia.

Beyond those tantalizing glimpses, however, ADIA steadfastly resists providing any granular financial information that might compromise its competitive advantage in global investment markets. But, as the sovereign wealth fund struggles to find the right balance between protecting its commercial interests and providing information for its stakeholders, it is offering up a few more hints about its investment activities. Although it comes late in the year, the publication of its second annual review at least confirms that ADIA has made another “positive step towards improved transparency,” Behrendt says.