The Australian sovereign wealth fund continues to increase its exposure to real estate, private equity and infrastructure, according to its Q1 2011 portfolio update. Future Fund’s infra and timberland assets increased by A$562m in the first three months of the year.
HSBC Specialist Investments has been renamed InfraRed Capital Partners. The infrastructure and real estate platform has more than $4bn of capital under management. HSBC will consider further commitments to future funds of InfraRed on a 'case by case' basis.
The National Audit Office has issued a report calling in strident terms for alternatives to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to be considered. PFI, which is the UK’s standard method of procurement for infrastructure projects, has come under increasing fire for allegedly failing to provide value for money.
An interim close last week has taken the amount raised for the French investor’s third infrastructure fund to about €370m. The new fund is targeting a final close of €1.5bn by year’s end.
DIF Infrastructure, the Netherlands-based infrastructure fund manager, has released details of an investment it made in a fully operational Danish accommodation project at the end of March.
In an exclusive interview with Infrastructure Investor, leading businessman Sir Gerry Robinson said that owners of infrastructure assets will be ‘forced to confront reality’ as a refinancing wall looms. Robinson recently joined start-up fund manager Ancala Partners as a founding partner.
If long-term leases of infrastructure assets are to have a future in the US, investors have to take a more nuanced approach to how they pitch such deals to the public sector.
The airport, which is majority-owned by Australian superannuation funds, claims to have attracted A$1.4bn worth of investor interest. It will use proceeds to repay maturing bank facilities and fund capital expenditure.
Aided by the huge Resorts World at Sentosa refinancing in Singapore, the social infrastructure sector usurped the traditional dominance of energy and transport in Infrastructure Investor’s global league tables for the first quarter of this year.
The CBI, the UK’s leading business organisation, has urged the government to speed up measures to attract investment into low-carbon infrastructure. Two areas it has focused on are the new Green Investment Bank and the role of the Infrastructure Planning Commission.
Indian banks took a stranglehold on Infrastructure Investor’s global mandated lead arranger (MLA) league table for the first quarter of 2011, accounting for no less than four of the top ten places. The banks all lent large amounts to an Indian mobile network project.
The recent foreclosure of a UK ferry operator owned by three Australian pension funds and Macquarie is a textbook example of how a perfectly acceptable deal in 2005 can go very wrong in 2011
Hermes GPE, a UK manager of infrastructure programmes on behalf of institutional investors and pension funds, has appointed Peter Hofbauer, former global head of infrastructure at Babcock & Brown, as its new head of infrastructure.
The recent foreclosure of a UK ferry operator owned by three Australian pension funds and Macquarie is a textbook example of how a perfectly acceptable deal in 2005 can go very wrong in 2011.
The infrastructure fund has obtained €475m of long-term project financing to back two greenfield solar thermal plants.