Europe should address the security concerns stemming from foreign investments - especially from authoritarian countries before it moves to make use of them in the current financial crisis, an influential Brussels-based think tank Bruegel has suggested.

The report, published on Friday (7 November) points out that there is a clear tendency of a growing share of inward investment into the EU, including from sovereign wealth funds, to be coming from "countries with diverse political regimes with which Europeans may not always see eye-to-eye."

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are state-owned investment funds composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, or other financial instruments. They have gained worldwide exposure recently by investing in several Wall Street financial firms that required substantial cash infusions due to the subprime mortgage crisis.

In Britain, some banks, including Barclays and Lloyds TSB, have turned to SWFs for capital to avoid the offer ... Читати далі »