The consortium has abandoned the €1.5bn deal – Romania’s first road PPP – after the government allegedly refused to include some clauses in the contract. The absence of these clauses is said to have jeopardised the team’s ability to secure financing.
The real estate arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has bought 5% of French utility company Veolia Environnement. The acquisition is the fund’s second foray into the French infrastructure market after it acquired 5.78% of VINCI.
Russia’s largest bank, OAO Sberbank, has announced that it will lend VINCI about $1.1bn with a 20-year maturity to help the French infrastructure group build the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, Russia’s second road PPP.
The Moscow-Minsk M1 road, awarded to a consortium comprising Russian and international firms, is close to signing financial close documentation. A bond issue guaranteed by the Russian government covering a significant amount of the project’s cost was instrumental in securing the close.
Editor of PERENews, Jonathan Brasse, and PEI Media sales and marketing chief, Paul McLean, will be running the London Marathon this year on behalf of Downsed, a charity which provides educational support to young people affected by Downs Syndrome.
The latest fundraising figures are encouraging - and point to a new trend in the way managers are raising capital.
The Flemish authorities have recently published tenders for two new roads worth over €600m including a new ring road in the Bruges region and part of a highway crossing the country from north to south.
New Zealand’s Conservative government announced today that its first PPP will be a 1,000-bed male prison in Wiri, in south Auckland. Expressions of interest will be requested by the end of this year with proposals due in by mid-2011.
Infrastructure Investor Assets, Infrastructure Investor’s companion database, unveils its inaugural league table of the first quarter’s top infrastructure projects. Papua New Guinea’s $18.3bn liquefied natural gas development tops the list.
The editorial team of InfrastructureInvestor.com takes a look at the top ten insights garnered at Infrastructure Investor: Europe 2010 forum in Berlin.
Ambitious plan aims to kick-start the economy by tendering €17bn of PPPs over the next year-and-a-half. Rail tenders will make up 70% of that amount with the remaining 30% comprising road projects. Most of the new tenders will be for greenfields with the EIB and Spain’s ICO to have a crucial role in funding them.
Macquarie Funds Group has announced two new hires in its private equity division, one of which is former Partners Group executive Mike Siebert who joined the firm’s Sydney office when it was launched in April 2008.
Why limited partner capital could be finding its way into the wrong funds. By Andy Thomson
Divided opinion 2010-04-01 Andy Thomson <P>Turn to p.14 of this, the April 2010 issue of Infrastructure Investor, and you’ll find out why one US pension considers now is the time for it to start becoming a “premier infrastructure investment manager” while a second US pension does not even believe that
Christoph Schumacher, the head of indirect investments at Generali Deutschland Immobilien, the insurance group’s asset manager, said at Infrastructure Investor: Europe 2010 that LPs investing in infrastructure should create a platform for discussion similar to real estate’s INREV or private equity’s PEIA.