March 2016 Issue

    A fork in the road

    Hands-on asset management is the catchphrase of the day. But being an active investor can actually mean two rather different things, as Matthieu Favas finds out

    First movers

    With increasing competition from direct investors in the large-cap space, a challenging era is dawning on fund managers. The solution rests on being able to spot promising mid-sized assets long before they come to market, explain First State’s Marcus Ayre, Philippe Taillardat and Niall Mills

    Rise of the REITs

    With MLPs flagging, infra REITs could step in to offer tax-exempt and non-US investors new opportunities for exposure to the US energy market. Chase Collum investigates

    The builder of businesses

    Jim Barry transformed NTR from a toll road developer into a renewables powerhouse and took BlackRock Infrastructure from zero to $8.6bn in AUM in a little over five years. Bruno Alves sits down with Barry just as he’s about to embark on his latest challenge: building the firm’s new real assets business

    Hot ticket

    Despite turmoil in Asia, China’s largest rolling-stock companies are raising record amounts of convertible debt offshore

    Flint: a watershed moment

    The water crisis in Flint, Michigan didn’t just show that a developed country can face Third World problems: it proved that safeguarding public health is not a matter of public versus private ownership – but of accountability versus the lack of it

    Are monopolies passé?

    One of the classic tenets of infrastructure investment could become an anachronism in an increasingly decentralised world

    The hunter becomes the hunted

    Hastings completed a big team reshuffle ahead of its potential sale by owner Westpac. TIAA-CREF and MassMutual are the two favourites to acquire the Australian fund manager, reports Nia Tam

    A walk on the wild side

    Noting that improvements to road infrastructure in Colombia have impacted wildlife transitory patterns, one concessionaire has come up with a wild new idea

    All hail the artificial sun

    What do you do when the sun doesn’t shine? If you’re a team of Chinese scientists, you create an artificial sun

    Is it time to invest in energy storage?

    SUSI Partners’ Tobias Reichmuth, Asif Rafique and Robin Poëll make the case for institutional investor engagement with storage infrastructure

    Coming of age

    An opportunistic play just four years ago, infrastructure debt has matured into its own asset class with record investor interest in 2015. Bruno Alves and four top industry professionals explore how infrastructure debt is poised to ride the ongoing fixed income dislocation