The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (, ADIA) is a sovereign wealth fund owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates) founded for the purpose of investing funds on behalf of the Government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. It manages the Emirate's excess oil reserves and is estimated to manage $790 billion. ADIA's operations have been characterized as secretive and opaque. History In 1967, Abu Dhabi emirate created the Financial Investments Board which operated within its Department of Finance and was responsible for managing the Emirate's excess oil revenues. However, in 1976, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding president of the United Arab Emirates, converted it into the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The goal was to invest the Abu Dhabi government's surpluses across various asset classes, with low risk. At the time it was novel for a government to invest its reserves in anything other than gold or short-term credit. Even today, investment in short-term paper remains the strategy for the vast majority of countries. In the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal of the 1990s, ADIA reportedly lost hundreds of millions of dollars. The operations of ADIA have historically and to the present been secretive and opaque. The fund is a member of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds. Strategy ADIA manages a substantial amount of capital, and is one of the world's largest investment funds. Due to its size, the fund has been influential in international finance. In 2008, ADIA co-chaired the International Working Group of 26 sovereign wealth funds that produced the "Generally Accepted Principles and Practices of sovereign wealth funds" (known as the Santiago Principles). These principles were created to demonstrate to home and recipient countries and the international financial markets that sovereign wealth funds had robust internal frameworks and governance practices and that their investments were made only on an economic and financial basis. 20 year and 30 year annualized rates of return for the ADIA portfolio were 7.6% and 8.1%, respectively, as of 31 December 2010. ADIA is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Today ADIA invests in all the international markets — equities, fixed income and treasury, infrastructure, real estate, private equity and alternatives (hedge funds and commodity trading advisers — CTAs). ADIA's global portfolio is broken down into sub-funds covering a specific asset class. Each asset class has its own