Lou Jiwei, chairman of the China Investment Corporation, said the fund might turn to the continent after initially shunning it because European officials had voiced concerns about its transparency and motives.

"I have to thank these European officials," Lou told a regional forum in south China over the weekend.

"They saved me a lot of money. Now they come to me without conditions and I am beginning to consider making investments in Europe again."

During a trip to Beijing in February last year, Peter Mandelson, then the European Union trade commissioner, called for a global code of conduct for sovereign wealth funds.

While the China Investment Corporation has not been a major player in Europe since its establishment in 2007, it has made several high-profile and costly investment decisions in the United States.

Among them was a five billion dollar investment in Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley in December 2007 which saw the fund rack up almost four billion dollars in unrealised losses as the bank was hit by the credit crisis, earlier state media reports said.

The fund was set up to help China find more lucrative ways to place its massive foreign exchange reserves, which now stand at 1.95 trillion dollars and are parked mainly in low-yield instruments such as US Treasury bonds.

However, the fund has so far not lived up to expectations, partly because of its launch date, shortly before the global financial crisis, while at the same time raising suspicions abroad about China's intentions.

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