Danantara Indonesia has appointed U.S. hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and Thai billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra to the advisory council of the Southeast Asian nation’s newly created sovereign wealth fund.
The fund, which will manage more than $900 billion of Indonesian state-owned assets, was created to invest across strategic industries such as renewable energy, advanced manufacturing and food production as President Prabowo Subianto steps up efforts to boost the country’s annual economic growth to as much as 8% by 2029.
“On paper, the names look good,” Harry Su, managing director of Samuel Sekuritas Indonesia, said. “However, the most important topic remains governance. We have to wait until the end of the this year to observe whether Danantara will be free from political interference in its decision-making.”
Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater, will assume the advisory role alongside Thaksin, a billionaire and former prime minister who spent 15 years in self-exile before returning to the country in 2023. He is the father of Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the incumbent prime minister.
Thailand’s GDP had expanded under Thaksin’s leadership. “He will give us a different angle when we will invest in other ASEAN countries,” Rosan Roeslani, chief executive of Danantara said.
With a real-time net worth of $2.1 billion based on Forbes’ estimates, Thaksin owns prime real estate through his controlling interest in SC Asset. He also has interests in two U.K.-based health tech startups, DNANudge and Owlstone Medical.
Dalio has a net worth of $14 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time data. He started Bridgewater Associates from his apartment in New York City in 1975. Today, the firm manages about $112 billion of assets.
Besides Dalio and Thaksin, Danantara also appointed former Indonesian presidents Joko Widodo and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to its advisory council.
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