REPORTS

Central banks continue to tighten monetary policy in the UK, Europe and the US.  As of March 2023, the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates nine times since March 2022 (Smith & Duguid, 2023). The European Central Bank also raised interest rates in March, albeit from a lower base, despite ongoing concern about financial stability in the region in the...

SSE plc has sold a 25% stake in its SSEN Transmission SPV, which operates the energy transmission network in the north of Scotland, to Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board for $1.77bn. The deal was completed in December 2022 and achieved a price-to-sales of 9.16. This is above the 3.1 average for UK network utilities sales (absolute last five-year mean), according...

In a year where global stocks and bonds lost more than $30tn[1] on account of high inflation, rising interest rates, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, unlisted infrastructure equity has fared well. Private infra debt finished the year slightly better off than corporate bonds but still heavily impacted by the rise of market yields. The infra300® index, which tracks a...

The Q4 2022 release of the EDHECinfra indices presents our updated views in the light of recent government intervention in the European and UK energy market due to the ongoing gas supply disruption. This report updates the Q3 2022 report and is presented following the TICCS® taxonomy of infrastructure companies. Over the course of the fourth quarter of 2022, European...

We examine the impact on the risk profile of wind and solar power investments of the increasing dominance of renewables in the energy mix of a given country, using the case of the UK whose economy has made a rapid transition to renewables and away from coal....

Using asset- and fund-level data, we highlight important differences between infrastructure assets and funds, and compare their historical performance and cash flow characteristics with both public and other private investments. An infrastructure asset’s age, sector, business risk and corporate structure all influence the asset’s risk-return profile. We examine the sensitivity of infrastructure asset and fund performance to public markets by regressing infrastructure returns (at the aggregate, sector and age group level) on public asset market returns. We then develop a method to estimate infrastructure equity assets’ income returns and cash flows depending on their age and sector. With measures defined that capture both idiosyncratic and time-series income return volatility, we highlight that a CIO cannot ignore the high idiosyncratic risk of infrastructure assets when evaluating their future performance and cash flow risk. To reduce a portfolio’s idiosyncratic income return risk, we find that adding assets from the same sector may be as efficacious as adding the same number of assets from different sectors. We show how many assets are needed before idiosyncratic income return risk starts to level off....