Risk Premia: Good times are over, now it gets harderAug. 30, 2023This is a grim headline, but with the economic shifts over the last two years, we might be seeing a more difficult market for infrastructure investment. From our perspective, we are observing some interesting shifts in the market. Firstly, despite the evidence that inflation may be cooling in major economies, there is evidence that interest rates might be higher for
Is Thames Water just a case of bad management?Jul. 18, 2023Can you really lose GBP1.5Bn in a couple of quarters when investing in a water utility? Investments in infrastructure like water utilities are very often presented as ‘boring’, slow-moving, low-risk assets, that also happen to be cash cows. That latter point is true, as my colleagues have shown in previous research. The rest is wishful thinking at best, but mostly
Social Acceptability Index Highlights Growing Concerns Over UK Sewerage SectorMay. 25, 2023EDHECinfra has created a suite of Social Acceptability Indices. To demonstrate their utility, we thought we would analyse a sector that is always in the news, the UK sewerage sector, where risk just materialised with an expected GBP80m fine of South West Water. If that’s not double materiality, I don’t know what is! For some context, the UK privatised its
Towards more frequent marksApr. 25, 2023Recently APRA, Australia’s pension regulator called for comment on the update of “SPG 530 Investment Governance” – a Prudential Practice Guide. This, combined with the update to SPS 530 – the Investment Governance prudential standard is interesting for infrastructure investors. Key questions are what is happening, why, and what this means for infrastructure investments? Firstly, what is happening? APRA is
The Denominatrix EffectFeb. 02, 2023Why suffer at the hands of the denominator effect when the true market value of private assets is available? When one asset class in a portfolio underperforms (or outperforms) markedly, the resulting change in the total portfolio value (the denominator) can make allocations to other asset classes significantly overweight (or underweight). Indeed, strong reported performance in 2021 pushed several asset
Energy Crises and Infrastructure InvestingDec. 20, 2022This year has been a very interesting one for infrastructure investors, especially energy infrastructure investors. The war in Ukraine led to massive dislocation in energy markets, this combined with outages in France nuclear power plants and Norwegian hydro has resulted in the price for electricity increasing significantly. In response, consumers have reduced their demand for electricity, governments in Europe have