Pension fund investment in infrastructure

Traditionally the preserve of governments and municipal authorities, infrastructure has become an asset class in its own right in the 2010s for private-sector investors, most notably pension funds.

[4] "At the start of the decade, the World Pensions Council (WPC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) helped convene some of the first international summits focusing on the future of long-term investments in the post-Lehman era, arguing that infrastructure would soon become an asset class in its own right.

At that time, we thought that the crisis would usher an era of durably low interest rates, pushing more pension and insurance investors to pursue a ‘quest for yields,’ increasing mechanically their allocation to non-traditional asset classes such as private equity, real estate and [listed and non-listed] infrastructure.

[7][8] On November 29, 2011, the British government unveiled an unprecedented plan to encourage large-scale pension investments in roads, hospitals, airports, and the like across the UK.

The intention is that the Founding Investors will provide around half of the target £2 billion of investment capital for the fund, before it launches early next year".