By Kevin Plumberg
HONG KONG, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Inflation is becoming a top concern to sovereign funds, which are looking at ways to guard their portfolios against price pressures, State Street Global Advisors' head of institutions business in Asia said.
Persistent weakness in the U.S. dollar and the extent to which many benchmark bond yields have fallen because of emergency policies are signals that inflation could become a bigger concern for sovereign funds, which typically have a longer time horizon, in about a year.
"Inflation is getting to be a concern. That's more of a medium- to long-term issue obviously. If you're a savvy investor, you can see it coming," said Hon Cheung, regional director, Asia official institutions group for the firm.
State Street Global Advisors is the institutional asset management business of State Street Corp.
Cheung said in an interview on Monday that his firm was advising sovereign funds it was not a good time to keep relatively large bond overweights, and to hedge against price pressures with stocks, commodities and inflation-linked asset classes.
The role of sovereign wealth funds around the world, which oversee about $3 trillion in assets, has been changed by the financial crisis. At the initial stages of the crisis, they were a key source of capital for struggling Western banks, injecting about $80 billion into the industry. (Editing by Jan Dahinten)