The demand for AI driving data centre construction might be “insatiable”, but the chief investment officer of the $115 billion UniSuper thinks that investors could be taking on technology debt and misreading the regulatory tea leaves as they rush to buy digital infrastructure.
COVID-19 lockdowns have highlighted the risks in infrastructure, that have been there all along. The realisation that infrastructure assets represent significant risk exposures, that should be understood and managed, will determine the coming of age of the infrastructure asset class.
The current coronavirus crisis has exposed many weaknesses, one of them being the chronic under-investment in social infrastructure in most countries – developed and emerging. So what can be done to make this more attractive for investors and meet the need?
India’s new sovereign development fund has raised a further £1.3 billion, on top of the government's $3 billion, to finance domestic infrastructure and growth. Key to its success is the unique investor-owned structure, similar to Australia's IFM Investors, and generous co-investment terms.
Coordinated fiscal and monetary policy threatens central bank independence and raises the odds that fiscal policy will be overused, igniting inflation. And investors will have a window of opportunity to pick up select real estate and infrastructure investments at recessionary prices.
SWFs are struggling to source deals in infrastructure as the demand is much stronger than the supply, so they are relying on new ways of investing in the asset class, mainly accelerating early-stage investments in renewable technologies, and with novel partnerships and co-investment structures.
In this third and final article on the EDHECinfra/G20 survey of infrastructure benchmarking practices the role of infrastructure investment benchmarks for the purpose of risk management is discussed.
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Infrastructure