Bruno Alves
The senior management of HSBC’s infrastructure and real estate arm, HSBC Specialist Investments, will buy an 80% stake in the unit from the parent bank. The management buyout is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2011.
Citi Infrastructure Investors has acquired a 75% stake in DP World Australia, which operates five container ports, valued at A$1.5bn. Citi will fund the deal, which is set to close in the first half of 2011, with A$530m of debt and the balance in equity.
After a failed IPO, Bilfinger Berger has managed to sell Valemus to Lend Lease for A$1.06bn. Valemus is Australia’s second-largest construction company with ‘secured future revenue in excess of A$5bn’.
The real estate fund manager has invested £16.7m in the development of a waste-to-biomass power plant in Cambridgeshire, England.
Clifford Chance has replaced CMS Cameron McKenna as legal advisers to Henderson on a dispute with several pension funds over the performance of its second infrastructure fund. The pensions have given Henderson until late September to draft a compensation scheme before taking it to court.
Real estate funds from group AMB, Artha Capital, Mexico Retail Properties and Prudential Financial’s Mexican unit will seek to raise about $1.28bn via the Mexican Stock Exchange.
Of the $179bn of assets managed last year by the world’s top 50 infrastructure funds, $109bn - or about 61% - correspond to mandates on behalf of pension funds, reports a survey by Towers Watson and the Financial Times. Macquarie manages the largest amount of pension assets of all alternative asset class managers, at $52bn.
The Japanese manufacturing company’s pension fund, which manages 87 billion yen of assets, is reportedly planning to target domestic and international real estate investments for the first time since 2006.
Partner Michael McGhee said at a transport conference in Barcelona that the fund manager plans to increase the airport’s debt-to-regulated asset base ratio to between 60% and 65% from its current 43%.
The German group will list its Australian construction unit – now known as Valemus – in July in a bid to raise up to A$1.4bn.