Infrastructure

Infrastructure is where our research goes deepest. Power networks, ports, data centres and utilities pay out slowly but steadily, if the assumptions behind them hold. Most of our work is about constantly testing those assumptions.

Europe and the faster-growing economies ask the same basic questions: where power comes from, how it reaches people, and how goods and data move. The answers look very different. In much of Europe the systems exist but were built for another era. Grids are ageing, new connections wait years in a queue, and permits can take longer than construction. In emerging markets, demand is already there and capacity is not, so the question becomes wat can be financed, built and kept running under harder conditions. Most investors study one world or the other. We have studied both, and comparing them shows things neither view reveals alone.

We are also willing to go where others hesitate. Many investors keep away from certain emerging markets because they doubt they can take profits out: currency controls, convertibility, tax treatment,

We have looked at how inflation, regulation and interest rates move the returns on these assets, and why some projects that look obvious on paper are never built, or are built and never perform. We give the engineering the same attention as the finance: whether the technology works, what it really costs, how long it takes to build, and where it tends to fail. In this field, those details usually decide the outcome before the financial model does.

We are also willing to go where others hesitate. Many investors keep away from certain emerging markets because they doubt they can take profits out: currency controls, convertibility, tax treatment, and the question of whether a contract will be honoured. Often that doubt comes from an unfamiliar landscape rather than from a close look at the facts. We intend to do that close look. That means understanding how capital actually moves in and out of a market, and building the route home into a project from the start, not treating it as an afterthought. None of this makes the risk disappear. Currency, politics and enforcement are real, and an opportunity that ignores them is not one.

Some of what we found surprised us. We would rather discuss it with the right people at the right time than publish it on a web page.

Status: research done for European and international markets. Engineering know-how in place. Preparing to launch once authorised.