Infrastructure Funds In Asia Raising $18 Billion

The global infrastructure play continues to receive capital investment. According to an Asian Investor article, $18 billion is being raised globally by a number of firms for investments into infrastructure funds, with India receiving the most investment. JPMorgan and Macquarie Funds Management are raising $2 billion, while private equity investor Actis is raising $1 billion. Of interest is that various India-based organizations, whether private equity or venture capital-based, are are also investing $1+ billion sums. The combination of infrastructure needs in India and throughout Asia, along with various funds looking to diversity into this growing sector, appear to be driving the need to raise and deploy capital toward infrastructure investment. Recently, new infrastructure indexes were being developed to track infrastructure companies and allow easier investment in index-based ETFs (see previous post). Counter to this trend was the recent divesting of some infrastructure assets as a result of the credit crunch (see previous post), but this action seems to be isolated to Australia for now.