Total assets under management by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) grew to US$3.5trn over the past year in the wake of a recovery in global equities markets, a report by Preqin revealed.
This represents a 9% increase from one year ago, when the figure stood at $3.2trn.
However, some funds have been used by national governments to cover budget deficits and support financial institutions and this severely impacted their final results, Preqin added.
An example of this was Russia's Reserve Fund, which has more than halved in size over the past year, with total assets now standing at around $60bn.
The Reserve Fund has been subject to withdrawals by the Russian government to assist in covering the federal fiscal deficit.
In contrast, one of the largest increases in total assets came at Norway's Government Pension Fund - Global, which reported returns in 2009 of over 25% and now has over $400bn in assets under management.