AustralianSuper and Legg Mason join Hong Kong infra body

The Infrastructure Financing Facilitation Office, a networking platform formed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, has boosted its members to 76 by adding 13 new partners.

New members include: institutional and strategic investors AustralianSuper, Mitsui & Co and CGCOC Group; US asset manager Legg Mason Global Asset Management; insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson; as well as consultancies Deloitte China, Ernst & Young, Currie & Brown and Willis Towers Watson. Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Malayan Banking Berhad, Morgan Stanley and Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank have also joined the IFFO.   

The IFFO, which launched in May 2016, aims to provide a platform to facilitate infrastructure investments and financing through knowledge sharing and information exchange. Its pool of members, which also features a group of infrastructure fund managers, has grown from 41 to more than 70 in a year.

Although the platform does not provide direct deal-matching services, it looks for members to complete deals through the workshops, panel discussions and project presentations it hosts. Earlier this June, for example, the IFFO hosted the signing of a $500 million commitment from Eastspring to the IFC’s $5 billion emerging markets debt initiative. Both parties are members of the IFFO.   

The Hong Kong infrastructure body is also hosting a five-day senior executive training programme this week on PPPs and project finance, in partnership with IFC and the Harvard Kennedy School. It is attended by 50 industry stakeholders, experts, policymakers and academics, according to the IFFO.