It’s all coming up roses for the asset class, which is set to benefit from rising inflation and global spending programs. A boom delayed is still a boom. The delta variant stymied reopening plans and the fiscal stimulus expected to accompany them, but listed infrastructure investors will breathe easier as government spending finally goes ahead….
The trend towards super consolidation is continuing apace, but there will be fewer mega mergers. It’s now just a matter of mopping up. Mega fund mergers are likely to slow as boards realise the “significant transition planning and integration activity” required to pull them off – but the established mega funds will continue to gobble…
They might be behemoths at home, but Australia’s biggest super funds will be on the backfoot as they scour the globe for investment opportunities. NAB’s biennial FX Hedging survey is not only a good insight into super fund hedging strategies, but the state of the industry itself – particularly its growing interest in markets beyond…
A time of great change is upon global markets – and the ‘winners’ that everybody is backing might not be the winners at all. It’s essentially an orthodox view among fund managers that the incumbents in any industry will “win” the transition to green energy. After all, they already have the infrastructure in place, stable…
The backyard keeps shrinking. And as another big asset disappears from the public market, Australian listed infrastructure investors will have few options but to look abroad for their exposure. The sale of Sydney Airport has generated plenty of headlines about the might of big super funds; no shortage of acrimony about another of Australia’s sparse…
When Richard Elmslie and Nick Langley started RARE, listed infrastructure “didn’t exist”. They hit the ground running – but that doesn’t mean there weren’t speedbumps. “We started with no revenue and no people – it was an idea,” says Richard Elmslie, managing director and co-founder of RARE Infrastructure (now ClearBridge Investments, following its integration with…
With markets as frothy as they are, you need to find the misfits – and play your cards close to the chest. It helps to be away from the pack. It often takes an outsider to reveal the idiosyncrasies of Australian society. The same can be true of its financial services. Adam Leitzes, founder and…
Tomorrow is starting to look a lot like yesterday, with policymakers leveraging lessons from post-war Europe to solve the new problems barrelling towards us. Free market thinkers will likely chafe. “Financial repression” is the institutional constraints on interest rates designed to reduce the government’s cost of funding and shrink public debt. The term, coined in…
An investor wish list shows how much we’re getting wrong. But it’s a long road to getting things right. One on one, big investors are usually loathe to suggest that governments could be doing more on decarbonisation, regardless of how true – and obvious – that statement is. Allow them to comment anonymously and that…
The accusations of insider trading hurled at Australia’s big super funds are explosive in nature – and pose something of a headscratcher. Regardless of their weight, reputations are at stake. The revelations made by ASIC on Wednesday last week (October 27) are a tough wake-up call for an industry that prides itself on its duty…
