Bilfinger’s headquarters in Mannheim and several international offices were raided by German and foreign prosecutors on account of alleged irregularities concerning road and rail projects won in Hungary. One of the projects could be the €500m M6 III road PPP.
London’s High Court told the 22 LPs looking to press charges against the Henderson PFI Secondary Fund II that they will have to forfeit their limited liability status if they wish to proceed with legal action.
The Dutch investor is in a consortium with Hochtief, Royal Boskalis Westminster and VolkerWessels that has taken the lead for the contract to rebuild, widen and maintain the A1 and A6 motorways.
Unipension, which has assets of more than €12bn, has participated in a €15m funding round at Danish renewable energy firm BioGasol. The firm is building a reactor for the conversion of waste into alternative energy.
Twenty-two LPs in the Henderson PFI Secondary Fund II squared off against the fund manager in London’s High Court this week over the purchase of developer John Laing.
A communications project designed to benefit the emergency services has become the first Australian PPP to be handed back to a state government at the end of the project term. The project was held by AMP’s Community Infrastructure Fund.
Alan Rubenstein, chief executive of the Pension Protection Fund, argued that pension money is available for infrastructure, but excessive leverage, misalignment of interests between GPs and LPs, as well as difficulty in accessing greenfields has discouraged more investment to date.
The UK government will today unveil plans to unlock further investment into infrastructure by doubling the amount that local councils can allocate to limited partnerships from 15% of their pension fund capital under management to 30%.
The bank will kick-off the pilot phase for its project bond initiative tomorrow. The bank has €230m of EU money to credit-enhance up to €4.4bn of transport, energy and broadband deals. The success of the pilot phase will determine the fate of a planned 2014 rollout.
With two months to go before 2012 ends, the EU-focused Marguerite Fund is still shy of more than half the funds needed to reach its stated €1.5bn final close target. Most of the fund’s current sponsors are state-backed financial institutions.
CIC International joins Qatar Holding as the second sovereign wealth fund to recently take a stake in the former BAA, now known as Heathrow Airport Holdings. CIC paid £450m for the stake to Ferrovial and other shareholders. Ferrovial now owns 33.65% of Heathrow Airport Holdings.
The Toronto-based fund manager, which invests on behalf of Canadian institutions, has acquired the Raging River hydro-electric power facility on North Vancouver Island. The purchase brings Aquila’s hydropower generating capacity to 20MW.
Quay Partners, the Australian private equity adviser and funds of funds manager, has launched a new four-strong infrastructure advisory group including Matthew McPhee and Nancy Mangraviti. They were part of a planned infrastructure fund of funds at RBC which failed to materialise.
Once the contract is closed, Sacyr will count five road concessions in Chile. The Spanish developer will refurbish and widen a stretch of Ruta 43 spanning 86km.
A regional agency in charge of managing the country’s Magdalena River has launched a request for qualifications for a PPP project which will restore the navigability of the main section of the waterway. The contract will be awarded in the second quarter of next year.