英国。Infrastructure Finally Maturing as Asset Class

4月份已经看到了一段时间纪念的复发，虽然不是很好的春天仪式在U.K：七个水当局在Irate客户身上施加了Hosepipe禁令。这些企业对水储量的消耗造成异常干燥的天气。他们的客户归咎于公司年迈，泄漏基础设施。

几天后，对于通过体力劳动的英国人厌倦了滋补珍贵的花园的英国人来说，这是一丝辉煌。伦敦自治市镇宣布他们正在谈判，以创建32个小型自治市镇计划的全市养老金基金。根据支持者的说法，一个主要优势之一是，汇总方案足够大，可以在当地基础设施项目中投资超过20亿英镑（32亿美元）。伦敦的水系统是候选人。超过40％的水管是一个多世纪的老年人 - 维多利亚时代的狂热的遗产为大建筑项目。

英国的许多养老金计划太小invest in infrastructure. They lack the money to create a balanced portfolio of investments within this asset class; they cannot afford to hire the specialist personnel needed for the time-consuming business of assessing the economic viability of infrastructure projects. For London boroughs, a large pooled fund would circumvent both obstacles.

部分原因是尺度的问题，只有1.1％的U.K.界定 - 福利计划的资产是基础设施，根据2011年全国养老基金协会的数据，并不高于2009年的0.9％的份额。

但一旦克服了规模问题，新兴资产阶级的基础设施就是有能力为养老基金产生体面的回报，以及提供公民服务的改进？

The opportunities for investment are certainly abundant — both in Britain, whose government is increasingly trying to find private-sector funding for public projects in response to its huge debt, and internationally, as emerging economies expand their infrastructure to cope with rapid economic growth. Governments know they need more — or at the very least more up-to-date — infrastructure, but they increasingly lack the means to build and operate it all.

The U.K. government has estimated that in the next five years, U.K. infrastructure will require about £200 billion in investment, largely in transport and energy, and it expects 70 percent of this to come from the private sector. In a March report, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calculated that between 2009 and 2030 the world will need $11 trillion in funding for “strategic transport” infrastructure, including airports, rail and oil and gas distribution.

对于养老基金，基础设施的投资吸引力主要来自一个令人放心的原则。根据定义，它是必不可少的 - 如果一个人认为政府正在进行评估需要的主管工作。对于使用长期视野投资的养老金基金，这增加了它可以期望从用户使用的基础设施资产的生活中常规付款流程的可能性。

基础设施都是更具吸引力的，因为许多U.K.养老基金在资产负债管理中越来越兴趣。每年都会更加小心，以匹配由于计划成员的总收入来自投资的总收入。良好的基础设施项目是高度现金，而现金的产生是定期和可预测的。

U.K.养老基金的额外奖金是，在全球的许多情况下，基础设施项目的回报与通货膨胀有关，因为对客户的最大允许费用通常基于国家消费者价格指数。这允许更仔细的资产责任匹配，因为界定的福利资金对成员的付款也是基于通货膨胀的。

然而，分析师警告说，基础设施投资呈现出许多与其他资产类别相同的陷阱 - 加上自己的几个。

与股票一样，直接基础设施投资，无论是通过专家资金还是通过政府项目支持，都可以与经济增长的低关系。无论经济状况如何，人们都将始终需要工厂处理污水。相比之下，道路使用量通常对收入和就业非常敏感，特别是如果司机必须直接支付。这使得在收费道上的投资是一个风险的战略。

一种解决方案是投资于客户是政府的项目 - 无论经济增长或使用率如何，都习惯于支付预设费用。此类别包括在建造和维护U.K的大楼和维护u.k的学校的私人资助的磅。自20世纪90年代初。

But this solution presents a brand-new problem: political risk. In 2010, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government scrapped Building Schools for the Future, the U.K. government’s partnership program with the private sector to rebuild secondary schools. A £16.2 billion agreement with the private sector to improve the London Underground subway system ended in 2010 after years of politically charged acrimony.

政治风险的部分解决方案是养老基金以广义为基础的大型股票投资，这些大型股票将从基础设施繁荣中受益，但不太直接暴露于个别项目的政治风险。在FTSE 100内，这些包括SECCO，该公司代表政府运行基础设施，以及建筑材料公司Wolseley。

However, investing in infrastructure-related equities defeats one of the main attractions of infrastructure investment: In a world where assets as diverse as equities, Italian government bonds and even gold are increasingly prone to rise and fall in value at the same time, for all its faults, direct infrastructure investment shows a low correlation with other asset classes. This will remain the case, at least, until it wins full acceptance among pension funds — at which point it risks becoming yet another asset class whose value plummets when pension funds make forced sales at times of financial market turbulence.