Roundtables on Infrastructure Finance & Development - Pensions & Infrastructure, June 25-26, 2009

Stucturing Infrastructure Projects to Attract Pension Dollars

Agenda & Background Paper

Pensions & Infrastructure: The Path to Common Ground

Reading Materials

America's Infrastructure Strategy: Drawing on History to Guide the Future A review of the history of infrastructure delivery models in America and and an analysis of why the design-bid build model has become so prominent over the past five decades.

Performance of PPPs and Traditional Procurement in Australia A recent study examining relative performance of PPP versus conventional procurement in Australia, which provides an economic rationale for greater private participation in infrastructure.

Public-Private Partnership Agencies: A Global Perspective More than 45 countries have launched public-private partnership agencies to coordinate and orchestrate P3 programs. This paper reviews strategy, structure and evolution across a selected sample of these agencies.

Pension Fund Investment in Infrastructure: A Resource Paper An excellent overview paper written by Larry Beeferman mapping both pension investment in infrastructure and labor implications and responses.

Roundtable Overview

Previous Roundtables hosted by the Collaboratory have considered private infrastructure projects in developed and developing countries with an emphasis on legal, financial, social, and political dimensions of sustainable governance arrangements. Lawyers, business executives, financiers, and public officials examined distressed and failed projects and studied renegotiations and workouts. Over the past two years, the Collaboratory has conducted research on public-private partnerships, infrastructure funds, and methods for project screening and selection as well as undertaken public policy work in Sacramento and Washington D.C. in relation to these topics.

The 7th Executive Roundtable will shift in a new direction geared around the following motivating questions: What is the way forward in California with respect to infrastructure renewal? If we are going to use PPPs as a delivery model, what should public officials and the pension community be doing? How do we align pension dollars with needs for infrastructure investment to ensure that all parties benefit--i.e. users, taxpayers, pensioners, lenders, government, labor? Participation in the Roundtable is by invitation-only and will involve a cross-disciplinary set of distinguished leaders from pension funds, state government, private firms, and academic institutions in a fast-moving problem-focused format.

The overriding emphasis is to create an open forum of discussion to (1) share information about the current state of practice within pension funds worldwide related to infrastructure investment; (2) assess the needs, objectives, constraints of the pension fund community as potential investors in California's infrastructure stock; (3) provide public officials in California with feedback on the design of new coordinating agencies to systematize deal flow and specific transaction structures; and (4) discuss possibilities of new club arrangements and pooled investment vehicles that could be set-up by the pension community to invest directly in projects in California and other states.

Participants are asked to come to the event prepared to silence cell-phones and spend a day and a half of "public service" working with us to think-outside-the-box, questioning conventional wisdom, putting egos and status aside, and brainstorming strategies both to renew infrastructure and ensure returns to pensioners. A draft agenda is set forth below. The 10:00am start time is intended to permit those driving down from Sacramento or flying in from the East Coast to arrange “same-day travel”.

Posted by rjorr at July 4, 2009 6:51 PM