The world’s largest sovereign wealth funds are based in the Middle East and Asia. But the concept of building up a fund to invest the proceeds of natural resources may have been invented 50 years ago on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean.

In 1956, the British administration of the Gilbert Islands in Micronesia decided to start charging a levy on the export of phosphates. By 2005 the fund, now known as the Kiribati Revenue Equalisation Reserve Fund, had grown in value to more than A$636m ($520m), or nine times the islands’ gross domestic product.