The dawning of infrastructure

Infrastructure is now broadly accepted as an asset class in its own right. The market certainly has scale - Deutsche Bank has recently estimated the size of the global infrastructure market at around $20.5trn.

This has ensured institutional investors have over the last decade or so piled into the sector, attracted primarily by the long duration, predictable cashflow and built-in inflation protection generally associated with mature infrastructure assets, as well as by the risk diversification available for larger investors in a market of such overall size. In the UK, the generic term ‘infrastructure’ tends to cover three basic asset types: Essential public sector assets, such as government accommodation (eg. prisons, courts and offices), hospitals and schools, which tend to have pre-deter...