Largest sovereign wealth funds

Ranking sovereign wealth funds by size sounds simple. It is not, and this page shows why before it shows the table.

Several of the funds most often placed near the top, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority and GIC, do not publish their total assets. Every figure for them is an outside estimate. Others publish a group balance sheet that includes operating companies, which is a different thing from a fund portfolio. Some report in their own currency, so the dollar figure depends on the date of conversion.

The gaps are large. Of the 167 entities with a comparable headline size, 139 also record another size figure in their profile. When that figure is on a different basis from the headline, the median gap is 55%.

So our table does three things other rankings usually skip:

1. Every row shows the basis: official report, our reading of the fund's own report, or a third-party estimate.
2. Every row shows the as-of date and, where sources disagree, the second figure.
3. We never add the rows together. A sector total built from mixed bases and dates does not measure anything.

Read the table as a set of sourced figures, not a single league table. The full story is in our study Why published sizes of sovereign funds differ.

Largest 100 by size in US dollars (100)