In 2006-08 sovereign wealth funds were the tigers of finance: SWFs, secretive government vehicles that invest aggressively abroad, had amassed $2 trillion-3 trillion. Gutsy deals are still being done. ADIA, of Abu Dhabi, is spending $1 billion on hotels in Hong Kong. Singapore’s GIC is investing $2 billion in telecoms in Britain. But it is likely that SWFs have been weakened by low oil prices, capital flight from emerging economies and smaller global trade imbalances: oil producers and exporting countries are generating less foreign cash to stash away. One augury is foreign-exchange reserve funds, the more open older brothers of SWFs, which invest mainly in bonds­. Their assets dropped by 3% in the past year, calculates Bloomberg. Another indicator is Norway’s SWF, which is unusually transparent. Its assets rose in the first quarter. But the government’s payments into the fund were the lowest since 1999, reflecting a slump in oil revenues.