Bruno Alves
HSBC is set to receive indicative offers for the sale of its UK rolling stock leasing company by the end of this week. A consortium of 3i, Morgan Stanley and Star Capital is pegged as the frontrunner but a source says the sale “is not a one-horse race”.
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.
The Canadian energy firm has signed a definitive sale and purchase agreement to acquire Deutsche Bank’s solar assets in Italy for €10m plus a deferred payment of €1.5m.
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 unlisted vehicle will primarily focus on providing junior debt for infrastructure projects around the globe. Fundraising is due to start soon with AMP Capital targeting a final close of between €700m and €1bn.
The Macquarie Capital/Old Mutual Investment Group reached first close with over $300m in commitments for their African Infrastructure Investment Fund 2. The fund will target investments in sub-Saharan Africa including roads, airports, power, rail and ports, among others.
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.
Portugal’s Court of Auditors has unblocked the concession contract for one of the roads that forms part of the country’s €5bn roads programme - after it rejected all of the concession contracts already awarded. But the solution may not be applicable to all the other rejected contracts.
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.
UBS Asset Management and state-backed Abu Dhabi Invest AD have dissolved their Middle Eastern infrastructure fund due to weak market conditions, both companies said in a joint statement. No investments were made.