基础设施：欧洲经济和保险公司的机会

An ambitious plan by the European Commission to turn the European Union into a €315 billion ($357 billion) building site from the middle of this year to boost economic growth has been eclipsed, at least in the headlines, by the European Central Bank’s decision to pump money into the economy with the same end in mind.

Yet the EU’s big infrastructure-spending plan should complement the ECB’s quantitative easing by increasing both the demand and the supply side of the economy. And Europe’s insurers are licking their lips in anticipation of mammoth investment opportunities.

11月，委员会，欧盟的执行部门，揭开了促进主要基础设施投资计划的计划。欧盟机构将在出价方面提供210亿欧元的投资担保，以吸引私营部门的更多参与，并达到3150亿欧元的总目标。

“Europe urgently needs to modernize its infrastructure,” says Andreas Gruber, Munich-based chief investment officer of Allianz Investment Management, the €600 billion asset management arm of German insurer Allianz. “Companies like us are able to finance this, as we are looking for long-term investments to fund the old-age pensions of our clients.”

Gruber拒绝预测未来投资的规模，但是，“我们认为这是一个非常有吸引力的地区，特别是因为我们的长期负债，我们期待着进一步的投资机会。”Allianz的最新数据于2014年6月，该公司已投入1.8亿欧元的基础设施债务，同比增长174％，基础设施股权为16亿欧元，同比增长16％。

Munich Re, the giant reinsurer, is aiming to increase its infrastructure investment to €8 billion, or about 3.3 percent of its investment portfolio, with half in debt and half in equity. The firm has committed some €1.5 billion so far.

With EU governments struggling to restore growth and institutions looking for higher-yielding investments, infrastructure “is one way out of some of our problems,” Munich Re CEO Nikolaus von Bomhard said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He said Europe’s big insurers have plenty of appetite for investing in the sector: “If you add it up, it’s certainly in triple digits.”

欧洲央行最新政策举措加强了当前的低产量环境，这促进了对基础设施的大部分兴趣。

“一旦保险公司的收益率明显低于4％，越来越难以满足其负债，”EMEA金融机构集团负责人的负责人普拉克利克莱克斯（Patrick Liedtke）表示为4.7万亿美元BlackRock在伦敦。他说，基础设施债务 - 或基础设施债务和私募股权的组合可以改善保险公司投资组合的回报，同时降低与其他资产类别的相关性。

Infrastructure debt has another attraction, Liedtke says: It often pays a steady income stream over as long as 30 years, creating a steady cash flow that allows insurers to meet long-term liabilities. Liedtke calculates that even relatively safe infrastructure debt can offer yields of 2 to 2.5 percentage points above sovereign bonds, with more available if insurers are willing to take more risk.

A survey of 201 institutional investors, including insurers, published by BlackRock in December found that 66 percent owned infrastructure assets, with 72 percent planning additional equity investments and 38 percent planning new debt investments.

Gruber of Allianz IM contends that there are some “supersafe types of investment” in European infrastructure. He cites payments made by a government for new roads, for which the payment depends only on the building and maintenance and not on the volume of traffic.

One such example is the €1.24 billion, 25-year bond issued in 2013 by the Granvia consortium, a public-private partnership that includes Allianz, to refinance an expressway in Slovakia.债券由斯洛伐克政府的付款支持为了保持道路的质量。

付款与交通量相关的道路项目提供更高的收益率 - 以及更大的风险。“根据风险，当前收益率可以从低至中单位数字到风险资产的10％以上，”Gruber说。

一个障碍更大的基础设施债务投资是欧盟的Solvency II capital regime。该指令将于2016年1月生效，要求保险公司能够持有更多资本来防范其投资组合中的风险。

Munich Re is lobbying EU regulators to have infrastructure debt treated like real estate, rather than corporate bonds, for capital purposes; such a change would cut the capital requirement in half, von Bomhard estimates. In response to calls from the European Parliament for easier capital requirements, the European Commission’s head of financial services, Lord Jonathan Hill, wrote last month that the commission was considering a “more risk-sensitive treatment” of infrastructure debt.

Liedtke的Blackrock表示，偿付能力II也对保险公司对基础设施私募股权投资的需求产生影响。该指令将为私募股权投资施加49％的资本收费，如果他们形成保险公司的整个投资组合，但如果私募股权是平衡投资组合的一部分，则该费用仅为25％并保持低位。“我们经常发现保险公司无法充分利用偿付能力二的多元化效益II，”他说。

Capital charges reflect the fact that infrastructure is not a riskless investment. For example, Allianz’s $1 billion investment in Gassled, a Norwegian gas infrastructure project, was hit in 2013 when the Norwegian government decided to cut tariffs for gas transportation by as much as 90 percent.

In the light of these risks, insurers and their asset managers lean toward safe projects while being prepared to invest in riskier ones if the price is right. When investing in infrastructure for insurers, “we tend to be on the conservative side, because we want to make sure that what we do is very dependable from a risk perspective,” says Liedtke. This sentiment is echoed by Gruber of Allianz IM: “You have to analyze each single asset in detail. There might be low-risk assets where the return is too low and high-risk assets where the return is attractive.”

国际公共合作伙伴关系基金经理，国际公共伙伴大学基金经理，伦敦证券交易所上市基础设施基金的基金经理，吉尔斯·基础设施首席执行官吉尔斯弗罗斯特表示，缺乏专业知识。许多保险公司“又有不成熟的成熟资产 - 这种资产，仍然是欧盟正在推广的百分比的苹果，”他说。因此，“保险公司目前正在努力提高他们对基础设施供应的机会。”

国际编辑Tom Buerklein New York (on Twitter at@tombuerkle)。促成了这篇文章。

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