Insights

Opinion pieces from the team, and uses cases covering private markets, infrastructure investment, climate change, social risk, and more.

Featured image for “NAV 2.0: A better asset pricing model for private infra”

NAV 2.0: A better asset pricing model for private infra

May. 02, 2024
CAPM may be ‘one of the founding frameworks of modern finance’, but for determining the net asset value of unlisted infrastructure it is terribly inadequate. Frédéric Blanc-Brude, the director of the EDHEC Infrastructure Institute explains why and offers an alternative. Originally published in Infrastructure Investor. When reporting the NAV of unlisted assets like infrastructure using discounted cashflows, best practice consists
Featured image for “Risk Premia: Good times are over, now it gets harder”

Risk Premia: Good times are over, now it gets harder

Aug. 30, 2023
This 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
Featured image for “Is Thames Water just a case of bad management?”

Is Thames Water just a case of bad management?

Jul. 18, 2023
Can 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
Featured image for “Social Acceptability Index Highlights Growing Concerns Over UK Sewerage Sector”

Social Acceptability Index Highlights Growing Concerns Over UK Sewerage Sector

May. 25, 2023
EDHECinfra 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
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Towards more frequent marks

Apr. 25, 2023
Recently 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
Featured image for “The Denominatrix Effect”

The Denominatrix Effect

Feb. 02, 2023
Why 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