Insights

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

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
Featured image for “Towards more frequent marks”

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

Energy Crises and Infrastructure Investing

Dec. 20, 2022
This 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
Featured image for “Insights by Vincent Levita on market shocks and infrastructure investment”

Insights by Vincent Levita on market shocks and infrastructure investment

Dec. 16, 2022
With the support of LTIIA, EDHECInfra recently published a new paper “Is Infrastructure Shockproof?” examining the resilience of infrastructure equity investments during market downturns, 2000-2022. We spoke with Vincent Levita, Chairman of LTIIA and CEO of InfraVia Capital Partners, about the paper’s findings and its industry relevance. In the latest research paper “Is Infrastructure Shockproof?”, why was it important for