Oh, for an investment bank client like China Investment Corp. While other sovereign wealth funds talk a good deal, CIC does them. Tuesday's $850m purchase of old and new shares in Singapore-listed Noble Group takes its total disclosed spending this year to about $4bn.
There is plenty more where that came from. At the end of last year, CIC had roughly $110bn in its overseas portfolio, according to Z-Ben Advisors, a fund consultancy. Of that, about $85bn was cash. Chief investment officer Gao Xiqing told Japan's Asahi newspaper in August that new investments in 2009 would be about ten times greater than last year's $4.8bn. If half that commitment comes from activating mandates with the cluster of non-Chinese fund managers CIC identified last year, it may have another $20bn to play with.
What's more, domestic competition is abating. CIC's recent flurry of deals suggests that CIC has resolved a bureaucratic turf war with the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the official reserves manager, which had been building its own portfolio of non fixed-income investments. Now, under new leadership, SAFE seems to recognise that sterilising inflows to meet central bank objectives is a tough enough task on its own.