European Union leaders on Friday laid out the welcome mat to sovereign wealth funds to invest in the bloc, as they met in Brussels with dark economic clouds gathering on the other side of the Atlantic.
With news of the collapse in confidence in Bear Stearns filtering into the Brussels’ summit room, EU leaders waved through a communiqué stressing that Europe would remain open to investment from state-owned investment funds.
[Read More:FT.com]
Friday, March 14, 2008
EU welcomes sovereign wealth funds
IMF vote deal likely but not without opposition
By Lesley Wroughton
WASHINGTON, March 14 (Reuters) - Developing countries have opposed a new voting formula meant to increase their sway in the International Monetary Fund, but acknowledge it will likely end up being endorsed by a majority of the IMF's 185 member nations.
The group of around 50 countries represented by Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Russia and Kenya, which speaks for 19 African nations, said the proposal did not sufficiently shift voting power from dominant industrial countries toward developing nations, which it was meant to do.
"The whole idea of the quota review was that the share of emerging and low-income countries would increase at the expense of industrial nations," one board official said.
"That clearly hadn't happened because the direct shift of quotas from industrial nations is nothing more than 2.7 percent, most of that coming from the tripling of basic votes," the official added.
[Read More:Reuters]
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