Cezary Podkul

Christine Yokan, portfolio manager at the $226.3bn pension, said during a presentation at Infrastructure Investor: Berlin that CalPERS is looking to build relationships with ‘like-minded partners’ who can help it build out its infrastructure portfolio, targeted at $5bn of its assets under management.

Anthony Rabin, the UK infrastructure developer’s deputy chief executive, believes PFI will see a ‘hiatus’ of about 18 months but will eventually be reborn in a ‘mutated form’ that may be more complex. He also expressed skepticism about infrastructure investment opportunities in the US.

Balfour Beatty Deputy Deputy Chief Executive Anthony Rabin said at Infrastructure Investor’s Europe forum that ‘infra fund performance hasn’t been great’ and blamed the lackluster results on strategy drift, erroneous assumptions about transportation assets and overleveraging.

Senior managing directors Michael Dorrell and Trent Vichie will form a new team that will continue fundraising for their debut infrastructure fund, which has so far attracted $400m in third-party capital.

The $25bn pension manager is looking to commit up to $300m to the asset class in 2011. In past years, the pension has backed a who’s-who of the infrastructure asset class, including funds managed by Macquarie, Highstar, Morgan Stanley and Energy Capital Partners, among others.

After two years at Kirkland & Ellis, Sean Patrick Maloney is now a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in New York, where he is expected to help the law firm ‘fill a gap’ in the brownfield infrastructure sector.

The vehicle is affiliated with the firm’s $1.1bn infrastructure fund, Carlyle Infrastructure Partners, which recently agreed its sixth deal.

Simon Ellis is joining the Australian fund manager from ING Infrastructure Funds, where he served as chief investment officer. His hire comes as AMP builds out its team in the wake of four London-based executives’ departure in September 2010.

The Canadian asset manager and the Japanese banking giant will provide cornerstone capital for an unlisted infrastructure fund being raised by Kotak Mahindra Group, an Indian financial services firm.

A greatly oversubscribed £600m bond sale that closed earlier this month may be followed by another offering in the next 12 months, though the focus at the moment is on improving the airport’s operations.