Infrastructure Finance: The Business of Infrastructure for a Sustainable Future
Without basic systems such as transportation, energy, and water, neither the economy nor society can function. And for this reason, infrastructure, no matter how you define it, will always be a large and important business sector. Recently, due to the credit crisis, providing, operating, and maintaining infrastructure has advanced as a recognized and important investment sector that reaches beyond earlier business models for transportation and public utilities. Banks, hedge funds, and other alternative asset investors are now extremely interested in infrastructure investments, and the field is expected to grow beyond $1 trillion in the next few years.Infrastructure Financeputs the changes in this burgeoning field into perspective and shows how you can profit from it.Author Neil Grigg explains how infrastructure is a composite sector and details its sub-sectors, including transportation, telecommunications, energy, water, waste management, and construction. He then identifies direct avenues for investment, such as stocks and bonds, and offers information about infrastructure sector indices, which are proliferating due to the rising popularityof infrastructure as an investment category. In addition, he addresses business opportunities that arise for private equity, startups, and new markets for infrastructure firms.This reliable resource also presents a scorecard ofstatistics for the aggregated infrastructure sectorand its parts, introduces an overall financialmodel for the sector, explains its capital structure,and describes the sources of revenues for its sub-sectors. The final chapter explains current thinking about national policy, including publicand private roles in improving infrastructure, while dealing with an ongoing financial crisis. Along the way, the book presents a number of brief profiles of public agencies, private infrastructure companies, and supplier firms. The profiles illustrate how the players participate in the infrastructure arena, whether they are public or private entities, and also reveal how private sector players can work within the government-dominated infrastructure arena.Deciding how to meet infrastructure needs drives an ongoing political debate about the allocation of resources and the roles of government, business, and individuals. But while the debates proceed, it remains clear that infrastructure is essential to meet human and environmental needs—and a solid investment in the future.