This week SilverBack had the pleasure of attending the International Business Mixer event in Łódź, Poland. This was a New Year’s networking event where we had the opportunity to network with companies associated with 16 bilateral chambers of commerce.
National Independence Day of Poland has prompted more than fireworks this year as significant investment is set to accelerate into projects such as battery gigafactories, semiconductor fabs, and data centres. It was also helpful for us to learn more about the products and services like logistics, compliance and new technologies which have become critical to the successful completion of these projects.
Famous private equity house, KKR, has just completed a record $6.4 billion raise for an infrastructure fund to invest in the Asia-Pacific region. Australian infrastructure leader, Macquarie Group, went further afield and raised a record $8 billion for a European infrastructure fund. Meanwhile, General Atlantic was busy last month buying UK sustainable infrastructure play, Actis, and its $12.5 billion of assets mainly located in developing countries. Oh, and CVC swooped for Dutch infrastructure manager, DIF Capital, in a $1 billion deal. Are you sensing there’s a bit of an infrastructure ‘land grab’ happening? Well, you would be in professional company. In fact, a January survey by pension consultants, Mercer, found that 54% of large asset managers polled were most likely to increase funding allocations to infrastructure. However, there is still an enormous gap between what the global economy is due to spend on cleantech decarbonisation transition and the $1.3 trillion of capital currently deployed in infrastructure funds. McKinsey reckon we will spend over $6 trillion every year until 2050. That might seem like an overwhelming funding challenge but there are a number of positive developments to report.
Like our earlier attendance at the Ireland-Poland Data Centre Forum in Warsaw at the end of last year, these events are great for engaging with new and established businesses helping to build such important economic infrastructure in Poland.