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Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are state-owned investment funds composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, property, precious metals or other financial instruments. SWFs invest globally and most of them are funded by foreign exchange assets. They may have their origin in commodities (created through commodity exports, either taxed or owned by the government) or assets transferred from official foreign exchange reserves. SWFs have been present in the financial world since 1953, when the first of them, the Kuwait Investment Board, was set up. Nevertheless their rapid development and growth of prominence is a rather new phenomena. Their growing position in the world, in terms of asset value as well as number of funds, has been observed in the world since 2005. --