How can it be that more governments are wealthier than ever, and yet fewer citizens enjoy the benefits that such wealth can bring?
Never before have so many governments owned so much wealth in the form of financial assets amassed in state-controlled investment funds, known as Sovereign Wealth Funds. Despite this, the effects of the 2008 crash are still being felt, and countries still scramble to find a way to kick-start growth. Inequality has increased and poverty is on the rise globally.

“Citizens’ wealth” – creating an additional source of government revenue by turning states into wealth-owners - is a long-established idea. And yet we are still to see this powerful tool used to its full potential effect, and in the service of ensuring the interests of its rightful beneficiaries – the people.

Political theorist Angela Cummine will outline what measures are needed to ensure that the management of sovereign funds truly reflects, promotes and protects the interests and values of their citizen-owners.

Angela Cummine is a political theorist with expertise in the governance of state-owned assets, ownership theory and economic inequality. She is a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) at the University of Oxford, where she received her doctorate and M.Phil in Political Theory supported by a Rhodes Scholarship. She co-edited the inaugural edition of the Global Public Investor 2014, a new worldwide publication on public sector asset management published by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF). Her research on sovereign wealth has led to advisory work with the OECD, the Harvard Kennedy School, the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Australian Future Fund. Her first book Citizens’ Wealth was published by Yale University Press in August 2016. See www.citizenswealth.net.