Rainy days are unpredictable. You don’t know when they will come, how bad they will be or how long they will last. The only thing you do know for sure is that they’re coming.
Countries build sovereign wealth funds for these rainy days and it is hard to imagine a time more suited to their raison d’etre than right now – a global pandemic, unexpected and unique, its duration and behaviour unclear, combined with a shutdown of global economies, a curtailment of international travel and therefore much of the world’s trade.
A decade ago, when sovereign funds were fewer, newer and smaller, they came to the fore during the global financial crisis, piling into the world’s big banks with a mixture of wisdom and ineptitude, sometimes both.
In
