Macquarie’s grip on global infrastructure
Macquarie’s grip on global infrastructure | Financial Times
Macquarie’s grip on global infrastructure
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Behind the Money news every morning.
About 30 years ago, an Australian investment company called Macquarie figured out how to turn public utilities into lucrative assets. This strategy helped catapult the company into the biggest infrastructure investor in the world. Now, its services range from delivering tap water to London to transporting gas across the United States. But recently it has emerged that one of Macquarie’s former assets, Thames Water, is struggling, and the utility’s consumers are feeling the consequences. We sit down with the FT’s infrastructure correspondent Gill Plimmer to discuss what we can learn from Thames Water’s troubles and what happens when private investments meet a public necessity.
For further reading:
Managed by Macquarie: the Australian group with a grip on global infrastructure
The dangers of asset managers when it comes to long-term infrastructure
How the Thames Water-gate burst
Thames Water travails threaten to plunge privatised sector into crisis
On Twitter, follow Gill Plimmer ( @gillplimmer1) and Topher Forhecz ( @ForheczT)
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
View our accessibility guide.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”