{"id":624863,"date":"2026-09-15T00:18:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T00:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624863\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T00:18:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T00:18:34","slug":"can-the-newest-sovereign-wealth-fund-avoid-others-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624863\/","title":{"rendered":"Can the newest sovereign wealth fund avoid others\u2019 mistakes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n

Liz Hoffman: The power dynamic between sovereign wealth funds and Western partners is changing fast. How do you think about what you\u2019re getting back for the money you\u2019re handing to Wall Street?<\/p>\n

Pandu Sjahrir: I\u2019m trying to learn from all the other sovereigns. We\u2019re the youngest. We just got so big so fast, and I realized you have to learn to walk, then run, then sprint.<\/p>\n

What did you learn from the \u2018walk\u2019 phase?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason [global asset managers and companies] exist. They know what they\u2019re doing. So partner with them, but say, \u2018if we become a customer or partner of yours, can you also bring some of that skill set back to our country?\u2019 Our country is large enough \u2014 300 million people, fifth-largest in the world. It can also be an addressable market for you. It\u2019s a good trade.<\/p>\n

One thing Western money managers want is access to financial markets<\/a> that have been off-limits in the past. Is that something Indonesia is open to?<\/p>\n

Yes. America\u2019s greatest asset has been its public markets. This is one of the models all of us want to replicate. So we\u2019ve offered: Invest with us, name the valuation, come into our stock market \u2014 and then tell us how to change it to compete, to make it bigger. We\u2019re willing to offer something very good, because a stock market is a monopolistic business. The only thing we ask in return is: Can you help us improve it?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve started deploying capital with selected fund managers. But in each one, we want partnership. We\u2019re also, in the second half of this year, sending some of our guys to train with these managers.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in it for them to train your people?<\/p>\n

In five years, these guys will be the best we have and most likely in director or managing director roles. It\u2019s up to the [private-equity firms] whether they want that future investment-committee member, the one who will be saying yes or no, to be in their corner. It\u2019s the cheapest investment a GP can make.<\/p>\n

How do you keep them from seeing you as dumb money in the meantime?<\/p>\n

I cannot change what they think. My focus is: Can we deploy capital well, make good returns, and are they bringing something to the table for us? Perception shifts.<\/p>\n

That was a painful lesson for a lot of the Gulf sovereigns. They spent the 2010s throwing money around because Wall Street was making them feel special and they got little back strategically.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we do direct deals only where we have the expertise. If we do a nickel deal for downstream processing, we\u2019re quite good at that. But if you tell me, Pandu, do a deal with an LLM company or a data center in Texas \u2014 I don\u2019t think we\u2019re the right party for it.<\/p>\n

In every jurisdiction outside of Indonesia, we always partner. We\u2019re doing a JV with UAE \u2014 they\u2019re very good because of their experience, so why not partner on AI together? We\u2019re doing a deal with CIC out of China \u2014 $1 billion to invest in general partners together, because access in China is restricted and I need someone who knows the landscape.<\/p>\n

You went to school at UChicago. That\u2019s a very specific type of economics education.<\/p>\n

Very pure. My second year, I took [Nobel laureate] Gary Becker\u2019s class. He said to us: \u2018If you get an A-minus or above, you\u2019ll work under me. B-plus, you\u2019ll probably get your Chicago PhD. B, you\u2019ll be a professor at Yale, Harvard, or Stanford. C-plus, you\u2019ll most likely go into private equity or investment banking.\u2019<\/p>\n

And?<\/p>\n

I got a C-plus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Liz Hoffman: The power dynamic between sovereign wealth funds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-624863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}