Country GDP vs. Investor Assets Under Management (AUM)

Key:

• AM – Asset Managers
• PF – Pension Funds
• SWFs – Sovereign Wealth Funds

Data sources: 

• GDP data comes from the IMF website. To convert the GDP data denominated by USD into EUR, we used the rate of EUR/USD as at the end of 2014 (USD 1 = EUR 0.8222) available on Yahoo Finance.
• Investor data comes from IPE surveys (Top 1000 pension funds, top 400 asset managers) undertaken in 2015 and the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute ranking

Research methodology:

This comparison is designed to show the relative influence of countries (which are held accountable for their impact on the climate) with major institutional investors (who are not). We are aware that an assets-to-GDP ratio compares stocks with flows. We use this indicator nonetheless in line with several international institutions (e.g. the OECD and the IMF) to provide a sense of the order of magnitude of the assets that institutional investors manage, and also because the value of financial assets is linked to discounted future cash flows. If readers think there is a better way to compare the size of economies with that of investors, please email us at [email protected]

Researcher:

Kazutaka Kuroda