China's top sovereign wealth fund's assets surge

China Investment Corporation (CIC), the country's top sovereign wealth fund, announced Friday that its total assets had grown to over 810 billion U.S. dollars at the end of 2015, from 200 billion U.S. dollars of registered capital in 2007 when it was founded.

The annualized growth rate of the company's state-owned capital reached 15.3 percent over the eight years, according to the company's 2015 annual report released on Friday.

This is the first time for the wholly state-owned company, also one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, to have disclosed the cumulative growth rate of its state-owned capital since its inception.

Headquartered in Beijing, CIC was established as a vehicle to diversify China's foreign exchange holdings and seek maximum returns for its shareholders within acceptable risk tolerance.

The government injected 49 billion dollars in additional funding to the company in 2011.

In 2015, a challenging year for CIC and the global economy, the company prudently coped with challenges by exploring new business opportunities and refining its corporate governance, thereby renewing progress in overseas investment and management, Ding Xuedong, chairman and CEO of CIC, was quoted by the report as saying.

In CIC's overseas investment portfolio, public equity, fixed income, absolute return, long-term assets, and cash products accounted for 47.47percent, 14.44 percent, 12.67 percent, 22.16 percent, 3.26 percent respectively, according to the report.

Due to volatility in global financial markets and foreign exchange losses triggered by an appreciating U.S. dollar, CIC's overseas investments generated a U.S. dollar-denominated net return of negative 2.96 percent in 2015, said CIC, adding that it had enjoyed a net cumulative annualized return of 4.58 percent in overseas investments.

CIC also said it ramped up investments in assets that generate stable returns such as real estate and infrastructure in 2015. Endi