Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s Blog

I still remember an incident which took place a few years back when my next door neighbor’s son needed a large sum of money for admission to an engineering college.
He had only a few hours to complete the formalities within the deadline. They made a few phone calls to his uncle in London and within [...]

In the Hindi blockbuster movie Gajini, the lead actor suffers from a disastrous aliment “Short-term Memory Loss”.  The current market euphoria across the world reminds me of a similar mental state for investors across asset classes who are unable to grasp the toughest lessons of last year’s global economic crisis.  The crisis was predominantly about [...]

Financial inclusion is one of the main planks in India’s drive to wipe out poverty – equal to efforts to build physical infrastructure.  Government experts define the policy as the “delivery of financial services at an affordable cost to the vast sections of the disadvantaged and low-income groups”.  Officials estimate that more than half of [...]

Defining which funds are sovereign wealth funds (SWF) is tricky at best.  A relatively strict definition is employed by Monitor Group, which defines SWF’s as investment funds that:
1.        Are owned directly by a sovereign government.
2.        Are managed independently of other state financial institutions.
3.        Do not have predominant explicit pension obligations.
4.        Invest in a diverse set [...]