June 2012 Issue

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has become one of the world’s largest direct investors in infrastructure, and also has arguably one of the more unusual benchmarks against which to measure its performance. Andy Thomson meets with Alain Carrier to discover more about the organisation’s investing template

In the following two pages, we explain how we put together the II 30

The evolution from the bank-affiliated fund model to the independent model continues apace in this year’s II 30 ranking of the asset class’s 30 largest investors. Meanwhile, pension fund appetite appears to be waning. Andy Thomson reports

Buyers of assets need to understand the pension liabilities they may be taking on. In the pages that follow, Colin Haines outlines the key considerations.

Richard Anthony talks to Bruno Alves about turning Evercore into a leading private funds group and why it’s his job is to be ‘brutally honest’ with general partners.

In the US infrastructure market, procurement risk is the most common, and most fatal, form of risk. Chris Glynn explains why.

Political risk is the risk du jour in 2012, permeating all areas of infrastructure investing. Bruno Alves takes a look at four of its manifestations.

Over the first two years in which we ran the Infrastructure Investor 30, a sharp battle has been fought between bank-affiliated funds and independent funds over the most dominant form of investment in the asset class. In this, the third year, the battle appears to have been decisively won by the independents.

Propositions to get the European capital markets to invest more in infrastructure have made progress.

The infrastructure fund manager held a second close in May on $5.5bn, gathering $2.5bn since last December’s first close.

Olli Rehn’s recent comments on using the EIB’s project bond initiative to boost growth have snowballed into talk of an EU Marshall Plan to end Europe’s woes.

Well established Down Under as well as in London, Access Capital Advisers in 2007 set up shop in the US. Now the asset manager has Mexico in its sights.

The start of bankruptcy proceedings for Spain’s AP41 Madrid-Toledo toll road could set a precedent that may end up being emulated by several other troubled concessionaires.

A financing method dating back to Thatcher-era economic reform, the availability payment model is finally coming of age in the US. But it’s not a solution for a fundamental lack of money.

With some US Midwest states apparently keen on privatisation, Kansas has remained an anomaly: doggedly self-sufficient, eschewing PPPs, and relying instead on a disciplined state budget and handful of federal money.

The OMERS-led Global Strategic Investment Alliance may have its work cut out to get close to its $20bn target – but it still poses a challenge to infrastructure fund managers.

Flat-broke Harrisburg has a freshly minted receiver with a faultless military record, but William Lynch has an unenviable task.

Aviva Investors momentarily fired its entire, 1,300-person workforce back in April (by accident).

As a fledgling asset class, data on infrastructure deal flow is sketchy. First State’s Ritesh Prasad explains how new research is beginning to shed light on relatively crowded and untapped areas of investment