China SWF Mulls LatAm PE Investment

Sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation (CIC) wants to boost exposure to LatAm, potentially via private equity. “For us Latin America is a very important region for investment,” says CIC president and CIO Gao Xiqing. He adds that CIC wants to “increase the LatAm proportion of our portfolio to match the economic contribution of LatAm to the global economy.” Noting the relative underdevelopment of LatAm public markets, Gao says that in order to achieve this increase in exposure, CIC was “looking at private equity and other direct investment opportunities.” According to Gao, LatAm represented 6.9% of CIC’s total public market investment last year. He was speaking last week at the China-LAC Business Summit, held in Chengdu, China. CIC has some $300bn in assets. At the same event, China Eximbank and the IDB signed a letter of intent to boost trade between China and LatAm/Caribbean. “We believe the partnership between China Eximbank and IDB to be a groundbreaking initiative to support increased trade activity,” says IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno.