Amid continuing falls on the Australian Stock Exchange, German infrastructure firm Bilfinger Berger has postponed the planned IPO of its Australian construction business, Valemus. The IPO was expected to raise proceeds of between A$1.22bn and A$1.39bn.
The new coalition government has scrapped the previous government’s programme to refurbish all of England’s state-backed secondary schools. In practice, 715 projects have been cancelled while 706 will proceed where they have been completed or reached financial close.
While the government says half a trillion dollars of private sector investment in infrastructure will be needed if India is to meets its development goals, financial sponsors say fundable projects with scale are still hard to find.
The Spanish competition authority has suspended trading of shares in Abertis after they rose sharply earlier today on news that its main shareholders – La Caixa and ACS – are in talks with private equity firm CVC Capital Partners regarding a €25bn buyout of Abertis.
The International Finance Corporation has agreed to invest $120 million in Egyptian Refining Company, a $3.7 billion oil refinery in Greater Cairo. Citadel Capital, the Cairo-based private equity firm, is a principal investor in the refinery.
LUXCARA Asset Management, a German investment firm specialising in sustainable energy, has acquired an 18-megawatt photovoltaic power station in Senftenberg in Brandenburg, Germany.
AXA Private Equity, Antin Infrastructure Partners, Goldman Sachs and Macquarie have expressed an initial interest in buying Spanish utility Endesa’s gas network in a deal that could be worth over €700m. Binding bids are expected in mid-September.
A new survey by Russell Investments finds infrastructure investment allocations likely to increase from a 0.3 percent share of global institutional portfolios last year to 1.4 percent in 2012.
Capital Dynamics has put itself in the vanguard of what it believes is a major new investment theme
Brazil’s federal audit court has given the go-ahead for the Rio-São Paulo high-speed train, known as the bullet train, after cutting its price by $837m. A tender for the technically challenging project – it will require 91km of tunnels and 103km of bridges and viaducts – is now expected by the end of next week.
The ratings agency predicts that transport infrastructure companies will likely produce low growth throughout 2010 and 2011 but warns ‘there remains potential for unexpected negative events to derail the expected recovery’.
Mutua Madrileña, a Spanish insurance company, has become one of the country’s largest underground parking lot operators after it acquired FCC’s underground parking business for €120m.
The African mid-market needs to move beyond being a magnet for ‘social’ capital and demonstrate that it can justify investment on purely commercial grounds.
The private equity party is starting to swing in Brazil, but many GPs are keen to point out that opportunities abound throughout the Latin American region.
The private equity industry awaits resolution on the AIFM directive as three-way negotiations between the EU parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission are expected to conclude in July.