Sovereign Wealth Funds
The Santiago Principles, Explained
A clear guide to the Santiago Principles — the 24 governance, investment and risk standards for sovereign wealth funds, how self-assessment works, and the debate over reform.
Topic
Explainers
Coverage, charts, video and research on Explainers for universal owners.
Latest in Explainers
Portfolio Strategy
Policy Portfolio vs Total Portfolio Approach
The difference between a fixed policy portfolio and the total portfolio approach, why funds like GIC and CPP adopted TPA, and the trade-offs each model carries.
AI
Data Center Power Demand and the Grid, for Asset Owners
AI is reshaping electricity demand. A guide to the data-centre power surge, the grid bottlenecks it creates, and the investment exposures that follow for institutions.
AI
The Stargate AI Infrastructure Project, Explained
Inside Stargate: the $500bn AI data-centre build-out backed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and Abu Dhabi's MGX, and what it signals for institutional capital.
Private Markets
Continuation Vehicles in Private Equity, Explained
How continuation vehicles work, why they have become a mainstream private-equity exit route, and what asset owners should weigh before rolling or cashing out.
Sovereign Wealth Funds
ADQ: Abu Dhabi's Third Sovereign Investor, Explained
The youngest and most domestically focused of Abu Dhabi's three sovereign investors — how ADQ was built, what it owns, and how the 2026 LIMAD restructuring changes it.
Institutional Investing
Factor Investing, Explained
The rules-based middle ground between passive indexing and active stock-picking, and why the world's largest allocators think in factors rather than asset classes.
Pension Funds
Pension Funded Status, Explained
How to read the single number that tells you whether a pension can pay what it owes — and why the same plan can show several funded ratios at once.
Pension Funds
The Discount Rate and Pension Liabilities, Explained
Why a single assumption — the discount rate — can swing a pension plan's reported liabilities by hundreds of billions, and how the post-2022 rate regime reshaped funded status.
Institutional Investing
The Reference Portfolio, Explained
A reference portfolio is the simple, low-cost benchmark that tells a sophisticated fund whether all its complexity is actually adding value.
Private Markets
Co-Investment vs Direct Investment for Asset Owners
How large asset owners use co-investment and direct investment to cut private-market fees and take more control — and where each approach goes wrong.
AI
The AI Capex Supercycle and the Long-Term Portfolio
Hyperscalers are spending toward $700 billion a year on AI infrastructure. What the capex supercycle means for long-horizon asset owners.
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