The South Korean National Pension Service – the world’s fourth-largest pension fund – says it will open a London office in June, its second foreign office after New York. The pension spent over £1bn investing in the UK last year, including the purchase of a 12% stake in Gatwick Airport.
Subsidiaries of France’s Aeroports de Paris and Bouygues – together with Croatia’s Viadukt – comprise the consortium selected as the preferred bidder for the €324m contract to more than double passenger capacity at Croatia’s Zagreb Airport.
Stephen Wermert, of the Asian Development Bank, discusses how the Central Asian and South Caucasus region is starting to open up to infrastructure developers and investors.
The global private asset manager has bought three solar portfolios comprising projects in California and New Jersey with an aggregate generating capacity of more than 100MW.
NewWorld Capital, a New York-based private equity firm that was founded three years ago by executives from the likes of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, has launched a new environmental infrastructure fund backed by funds of funds manager North Sky Capital.
The monoline’s European boss, Dominic Nathan, sees Assured Guaranty as part of ‘a world of four or five competing, but different, solutions that will be the facilitators of the capital markets’.
The UK's £3bn Green Investment Bank will be have its administrative headquarters in Edinburgh with its main transaction team based in London. 3i's Sir Adrian Montague is helping to set up the bank.
The French infrastructure fund manager is the frontrunner to buy a minority stake in Veolia Transdev – a global leader in public transportation – from utility Veolia.
The Macquarie Renaissance Infrastructure fund – together with Xenon Capital Partners and the Russian Direct Investment Fund – has bought 26.4% of wholesale Russian power generator Enel OGK-5 for $625m. The seller was Russian energy firm Inter RAO.
UK airports operator BAA – owned by Spain’s Ferrovial – has dug in its heels and decided to appeal against the latest legal ruling telling it to sell London’s Stansted Airport – a move that could delay the sale for a few more months.
The acquisition of a stake in Russian Towers, an operator of telecommunications infrastructure, is the Macquarie Renaissance Infrastructure Fund’s third deal. With over $250m already invested, Macquarie is close to having its $630m Russian vehicle halfway invested.
The Isle of Wight Council has chosen consortia led by French companies Colas and Vinci to submit final proposals for the island’s largest engineering scheme, which will see the winner refurbish and maintain several hundred miles of roads and footways. A preferred bidder will be announced in June.
The Australian group, together with France’s Eiffage, has obtained a €2.8bn, five-year loan in addition to a €720m revolving credit facility. Moody’s deemed the refinancing ‘moderately credit positive’, but warned the toll road network’s Baa3 rating might be revised in the future.
The Australian Infrastructure Fund has divested its 35% stake in Victoria’s largest regional port for A$25m. The buyers were RREEF Infrastructure – which picked up 15%, increasing its ownership of the port to 50% – and Asciano, the port’s operator, which purchased the remaining 20%.
The Canadian pension has partnered with the Australian developer and will invest A$139m across five operational public-private partnership projects held by Plenary in Australia. The deal is La Caisse’s first direct investment in Australia, but future joint investments are on the cards.