China's sovereign wealth fund has acquired 1.1 per cent of British distiller Diageo, giving it a stake worth ￡221m, in a sign of its emerging strategy to spread its investments over different global markets and asset classes.

The move by China Investment Corp, which manages $200bn of the country's $2,132bn in foreign exchange reserves, makes the fund Diageo's ninth largest investor. CIC, established in 2007, came under withering criticism at home after its early high-profile investments in Blackstone and Morgan Stanley, the US financial companies, suffered large paper losses.

In recent months, it has started quietly to reassert itself, purchasing stakes in a Canadian miner and an Australian property trust, as well as taking the opportunity of low share prices to increase its stake in Morgan Stanley. It also holds a 0.5 per cent stake in Britain's largest retailer, Tesco, but is not one of the group's top 30 shareholders.