Sovereign Wealth Funds (“SWFs”) are state controlled institutions set up to invest national reserves; they have gained much greater visibility over the last few months. As conventional sources of liquidity have dried up as a result of the implosion of US sub-prime and the global credit crunch that followed, SWFs have been viewed as an alternative supply of funding. In this article, we look at the scale of these funds, the investment approaches they follow and some of the issues surrounding SWFs that might potentially concern both investee companies and governments.