Short answers, pulled from the story.
GIC was established in 1981 by Goh Keng Swee, then Singapore's first Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He was advised by the British merchant bank N M Rothschild and Sons. The fund was originally named the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, from which the acronym GIC is derived.
The Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute estimated GIC's assets at US$936 billion as of May 2026. Forbes estimated the figure at US$744 billion. GIC does not officially disclose the size of the funds it manages, because revealing the exact amount could expose the full scale of Singapore's reserves.
GIC withholds its exact asset figure because revealing the full size of Singapore's financial reserves would make it easier for currency speculators to attack the Singapore dollar during periods of vulnerability. The fund does publish performance metrics including five-year, ten-year, and twenty-year rates of return.
GIC invested 11 billion Swiss francs in UBS in late 2007 for a 7.9% stake; when the position was converted to equity in 2010, it had lost an estimated 70% of its value. The fund's US$200 million equity stake in Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village was also effectively wiped out after Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty defaulted on their loan in 2010. GIC stated that its overall portfolio fully recovered to its pre-2008 value.
GIC's mission is to preserve and enhance the international purchasing power of Singapore's foreign reserves, targeting returns above global inflation over a rolling investment horizon of twenty years. For the year ended the 31st of March 2017, its annualised twenty-year real rate of return was 3.7%.
GIC is a Fifth Schedule company under the Singapore Constitution, making it accountable to the President of Singapore, who is empowered to obtain information to safeguard the country's reserves. The Auditor-General, appointed by the President, submits an annual audit report to both the President and Parliament. GIC is also a board member of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds and publishes its adoption of the Santiago Principles.