| Summary: | This article investigates the factors that motivated sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in their massive investment operations in European or US company equity, especially banking institutions. Considered to be investors with considerable financial clout, albeit passive and long-term, SWFs have long been seen as a restoring force in financial markets able to soften the impact of the destabilizing speculative strategies practiced by certain institutional operators. Over 2007, their massive cash injections into the banking sectors of industrialised countries could even go as far as having us believe that these investors were acting as saviours of the system. The rise of SWFs could hence be seen, at that time, as a change in financial capitalism in which States would act both as investors and regulators. Nevertheless, a sharper analysis of strategies conducted by SWFs shows that some of them are opportunistic, comparable to the strategies implemented by private institutional investors.
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